Soundtrack: November by Mythos - New Age

Tunnel Vision

Pushing their luggage trolleys ahead of them, Lara and Kurtis headed for the line of rental cars parked outside Cancun International. The perpetual sun beat down on the burning concrete at the edge of their shade under the car park roof, a stark contrast to the duller area in which they walked. Lara's sunglasses were up on her head, holding her hair out of her face, and the loose black vest top she wore fluttered in the cooling breeze.

"I see it," said Kurtis, meaning that he had spotted the car with the registration plate that matched the scribbled card tag on their keys, and he held his hand out for them. Staring at his palm for a moment, Lara dug into the pocket of her loose, short cotton skirt and dropped the keys into his waiting hand. He rushed ahead, and Lara paused, taking in a deep breath, dropping her sunglasses down onto her nose, and finally following him to their car.

All ready to go, she was just about to turn the key in the ignition when a phone rang. Surprised, she looked around, and saw Kurtis retrieving one from his pocket. He flipped it open and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Bonjour, Kurtis!"

"Oh, Francine, salut!"

"Kurtis, is everything alright?" his colleague from the restaurant asked him in French, and he replied in kind, his voice warm.

"Everything's fine."

'It's ok, let's go,' he mouthed at Lara, gesturing for her to go ahead and back them out of the parking spot. Lara, being a speaker of the language herself, recognising the caller's name, and noting his friendly demeanour, pursed her lips in what was possibly jealousy and started the engine with a hard turn of her wrist.

"It's just that when you left last Wednesday, you were really angry with that rude customer. Then, I come back today after my week off and I find out that you've been given compassionate leave. What's wrong?"

Kurtis sighed a little, leaning back into his seat. "That customer was somebody I know, they came to tell me that there was some stuff back in America that I needed to sort out. They were pretty upset over it, I guess they took it out on you without meaning to." His eyes flicked over to Lara, noting her tightly regulated breathing and trembling jaw line. Out of the parking space, she switched from reverse to first gear and almost stalled the car as she stamped on the gas.

"Rene said that your aunt had died and you had to sort the funeral."

"Yeah, that was a lie to get him to give me the time off. Don't tell him, huh?"

"So what's wrong?" Francine, always so selfless and concerned for other's well-being. He could imagine her worriedly digging one fingernail under the other as she bit her lip, stood at the phone in the corner of the restaurant.

"It's…family stuff." She'd leave him be. "Look, Francine, I'm not in France so this is going to be costing us both a fortune. I'll call you when I can get a landline, ok?"

She acquiesced, saying her goodbyes and leaving Kurtis to flip his phone shut. He looked to Lara, ready to speak to her, but her eyes were fixed on the road and her body was tense, anger radiating off her in waves. Turning his unspoken comment into an unimpressed exhalation, he turned to stare out of his passenger window, head in his hand and elbow on the windowsill as he watched the scenery pass on the way to their hotel.

Still barely a word having passed between them, they arrived at the ruins of Chitchen Itza from their hotel late that day. The site of several ancient Mayan structures in proximity, every day it was crawling with sightseers. The last few tourists among the ruins were readying themselves to leave, half-full tour buses waited for the rest of their parties to board, and a gradual quiet began to descend on the ancient, silent ruins in the gathering dusk.

"Tourists," Lara sneered as they crossed the grass towards the Temple Of The Warriors.

"Do they have any less right to be here than you do?" Kurtis challenged. The memory of his vision was still with him, and though it didn't particularly frighten him that she was quite possibly planning to kill him, it did sicken him, just as her constant contrary and nasty behaviour sickened him.

"They just…have no respect," Lara defended. "Places like these are so much nicer when they're empty and quiet."

"Oh, get over yourself," Kurtis muttered, striding forwards and leaving her behind.

She watched him hurry away, his hair blowing in the breeze, and her face fell.

Why was she so hateful all the time? Why was she so angry with everyone, even people she didn't know? Why was she stuck in such a damned vicious circle? Why couldn't she extend the peace offering to the world and break it?

Her eyes narrowed. Because she shouldn't have to, that was why.

Straightening her shoulders, raising her head, she walked tall towards the Temple, taking her time. Kurtis could wait.

A few short minutes later, she came upon him sitting on the ground, legs bent to his chest and arms resting on his knees, waiting for her at the back of the rows of columns. The Temple had been claimed by the jungle over the centuries, its plants and tree roots knotting around it as though they were pulling it selfishly out of reach from civilisation. Civilisation had responded in kind, cutting the stones free and restoring them as best it could, but the work was not yet finished and the last little area of columns she now picked her way through was still lost in greenery. With nothing different to see, few tourists ventured back here.

"Mind your step," Kurtis said, nodding towards her feet, and she looked down to find herself about to trip over a thick, sinuous vine. She smiled her thanks somewhat guiltily.

"Did you find the depression for the skull we saw?"

"Yeah." He got to his knees, reaching over to a part of the floor and rubbing at it with his fingers vigorously to remove moss and dirt. "It's right here."

"Thank you." Lara joined him on the ground, pulling the skull from her backpack and pressing it into the sunken visage. There was a sound of grinding stone and then part of the floor nearby dropped away, an open trapdoor just as their vision had showed them.

They stared into the shadows. "Very dark," Lara remarked. She pulled a flare from her bag and lit it, dropping it into the blackness. Almost immediately it hit ground, and lay there illuminating its surroundings. The trapdoor dropped down into the end of a passageway, with only one way forward, heading back underneath the columned area. The walls were decorated with carvings, the floor seemed to be compacted dirt, and the faint sound of running water could be heard from inside.

Lara dropped in feet first, landing with the dull thud of boots on earth. Picking up the still-burning flare, she crept down the passageway, Kurtis jumping down behind her.

"Hieroglyphs?" Kurtis asked, staring around at the blocks of small symbols and drawings on the walls.

"Logosyllabics, to be pedantic," Lara answered. "Prayers, I think. Nothing jumps out as being important."

"No symbols for 'death' or 'trap' or 'painful extinguishing of life breath', then?"

"Well, you know, not even the best linguists can fully understand Mayan script, especially given its evolution over time."

"Are you telling me that you're guessing what this stuff says?" Kurtis asked, mockingly convinced that they were going to die.

"It's an educated guess," Lara protested. She looked over her shoulder at him with a small titter.

She could be so easy-going when you gave her some slack, Kurtis marvelled.

The corridor doubled back on itself in a hairpin bend and began to descend deeper underground. The flare flickered for the last few seconds of its life, faded, and then left them in the pitch-black darkness.

Kurtis stared around at the nothingness, Lara in front of him scuffling as she blindly dug in her bag for another light. Her elbow caught him on his cheek.

"Oh! Sorry!" she breathed.

"It's ok." Kurtis was too distracted by his uneasiness to do anything more than place a hand lightly on her arm to give her some indication of his whereabouts.

With a fizzle, they were once again bathed in light, and they continued onwards, the sound of running water getting louder.

"Look," Lara said, holding the flare out further in front of her and quickening her pace to get a better look at the area she had managed to pick out of the gloom.

The walls opened out to a large rectangular area with a slightly higher ceiling and no floor. Instead, the floor of their passageway became a bridge over a chasm leading to a doorway in the opposite, decorated wall. Level with the bridge, coming from rectangular openings along the walls, were fast-flowing waterfalls, the water shooting outwards and arcing down into blackness. They couldn't see, but from the sounds of it, the room was filled with water a good distance down. Two sets of stairs branched off to the left and right, freestanding between the bridge and two platforms that stretched out along part of the wall, each one holding a simple iron stand topped with a shallow stone basin. Climbing up to one, Lara found it filled with the rotting, stained remains of oil-soaked cloth. She was about to light a flare and leave it burning in the lamp stand, when Kurtis' voice suddenly barked a short, Latin order.

"Luceo!"

He threw one hand into the air, flicking his fingers outwards, and a pale, glittering orange glow came into being all around them, reaching into every tiny cranny and illuminating the entire room from its ceiling to its deep, water-covered floor. It was the same light that had followed the active chirugai, Lara noticed, only much, much paler and less invasive. She turned around in circles as she backed away from the now redundant lamp, a look of delighted awe on her face as she stared around at the translucent fog and reached out to touch the sparkles, finding them to be just an illusion, slipping through her fingers, evasive, untouchable. They were so beautiful.

"You didn't react like that in the Louvre."

Broken out of her trance, Lara found Kurtis with his arms folded, watching her with a hint of a smile.

"That was only a little glow. And I was rather pre-occupied with unfortunate circumstances."

He didn't answer her, just blinked and continued to watch. She coughed, uneasy under his gaze, and descended back to the bridge, making brief eye contact as she sidled past him to make for the doorway.

"I've found it," she called back to him, and he joined her.

About two feet tall and just a few centimetres wide, there was a glyph-surrounded window in the wall that looked into a recess. Inside, the top of its head glinting in the orange light just at the bottom of the window, was a pink crystal skull. Too large to be pulled through the gap, the skull was apparently trapped.

The rest of the walls were painted with patterns and pictures of bloody sacrifice, the colours still amazingly fresh, and a few ceremonial statues were set around the floor. Glancing over them, not really comprehending, Kurtis turned his attention back to Lara, who was concentrating solely on the writing.

"What does it say?"

"It's a Shamen's prayer to the underworld," Lara answered, "and a message. 'What you seek lies within these walls, only for those who are worthy'."

"How do we get to it?"

Lara shrugged. "Force? Can you break through with those 'skills' of yours?"

"Ok." Kurtis nodded, taking a steadier stance and motioning for her to step back. "I'll give it a go."

He thrust a flattened palm towards the wall, letting out a small grunt of effort, but nothing happened. Confused, he looked to his hand.

"I don't get it, I can't – "

The click of safeties being taken off pistols interrupted, and he jerked his head up to find Lara aiming her weapons at something behind him. He spun, and his eyes locked on to the tensed muscles and calculating eyes of a jaguar.

Before anyone could make another move, there was the sound of grinding stone, and the open doorway began to shrink as a glyph-covered sliding door slowly emerged from the wall. The sound of a similar movement over towards the skull caused Lara to flick her gaze away from the jaguar for a moment. Through the tall window, a slowly lowering platform inched its way down towards the head of the skull.

"Kurtis," Lara began slowly, keeping back against the wall as she slowly made for the door, guns constantly trained on the cat, "I'll draw it away, you keep working on that wall."

"Lara, the door is closing."

"See that skull indentation on the wall?" Lara asked, nodding her head towards the carving he hadn't yet noticed, "That's your keyhole to get out, but you won't have a key if you don't save the skull before it's crushed."

"And if I can't? My powers aren't working in here."

"Use brute strength like normal people, then."

Still in a standoff with the growling jaguar, Lara approached it carefully and managed to back out of the door onto the bridge. The cat turned, watching her, ignoring Kurtis.

Taking his chance, desperate to get the prize before he was entombed and Lara was mauled, Kurtis spun and once again thrust his arm towards the window with a loud grunt. The movement distracted Lara, who looked up for a second, breaking her stalemate. Yowling, the jaguar sprung forwards, and, reacting, Lara opened fire.

She couldn't have been missing at such close range, but the feline just kept running towards her through the bullets as though it was invincible, advancing rapidly even as Lara was skipping backwards, muzzle flares lost in the permeating orange.

Desperate now, never having felt so uselessly weak before and barely able to keep his eyes from the closing door with the deafening echo of gunshots ringing in from behind it, Kurtis gave up on his inexplicably suppressed telekinesis and snatched up a small statue from the floor, crying out as he attacked the wall with it, hammering and smashing over and over again, causing no more damage than a few shallow chips.

Realising that the animal was about to jump, Lara shoved her guns back in their holsters and leapt for the platform to her right, just managing to grab on to its edge and, frantic, scramble up. She rolled onto her back, arming herself once again just as the jaguar reached the top of the steps, skidding around the corner. Guns still in hands, Lara rolled to her knees and dived for the lamp stand, knocking it over in an attempt to hit or distract the animal.

"Lara?" Kurtis bawled. The platform had less than a foot to go before it reached the skull and likely wouldn't stop. Judging from its speed, he had maybe a minute to break the wall. Whether Lara could survive that long, he didn't know. His frenzied assault on the masonry continued. The door to the chamber began to close its last few inches.

Arms circling, Lara jumped back to the bridge at the bottom of the steps, turning to put her back to Kurtis and opening fire on the jaguar once again as she again started to retreat and her attacker landed on the spot that she had only just vacated.

He twisted sideways as he ran, only just fitting through the thin gap of the doorway that continued to close, cutting off the view of the unbroken window and the waiting skull.

She screamed as the jaguar pounced, sailing through the air towards her. She hadn't anticipated it, hadn't made the first move, hadn't managed to find an escape route from the tomb that she could traverse faster than the evolved hunter. Instinctively, she put her arms up to shield her face – and a strong hand grabbed her wrist, hauling her off the bridge, leaving her body swinging through the air towards the platform opposite the one she'd just left, hanging precariously from the grip of someone perched upon of it.

Pray swept away from under its nose, the jaguar missed.

Opening her eyes, Lara looked up to find Kurtis lying on the platform, both of his hands wrapped around her right wrist, his face grimacing as he held her weight. She dangled above the drop, waterfalls around her plummeting down the dizzy height to the pool below.

She stared at him, shocked for a moment, and then came back to her senses and, panicked, looked around for the jaguar.

"Where did it go?"

The door to the chamber was closed, the jaguar was gone.

Kurtis' tone of voice matched her confusion. "I don't know."

He pulled her up, Lara swinging one leg up to help herself along, and both of them collapsing onto the ledge.

"Did you get it?" Lara asked, breathing heavily.

Kurtis shook his head. "No time. You were in hot water."

Lara's face fell. Closing her eyes in regret, she was about to bemoan their necessary loss when once again there was a sound of stone rubbing against stone, and she stared, astonished, as the doorway slid open. She scrambled to her feet, clattering down the steps to the bridge and running towards what she was sure would be the remains of the skull.

It sat there, intact, on the floor underneath the unbroken window.

"What the hell?" Kurtis was behind her, mystified.

"Don't…question it." Lara said quietly, stooping to pick it up. "Just don't."