Lara stormed from room to room getting together her equipment for the journey she, no doubt, would be setting off on that very day. Hillary, meanwhile, was having the time of his life cleaning up the atrocious mess that had accumulated the Croft Manor. There were numerous bottles of different chemicals strapped to a belt around his waist. For any job there was to do, he had the remedy for it! A little Windex, Soft Scrub, Tilex, Clorox, you name it. This eccentric butler had it all. The bodies had been disposed of now, and all that was left was the blood, guts, glass, bullets, parts of the stairs and banisters, and toppled over furniture that had been blown to no repair.
Hillary lightly danced over the debris to a Frank Sinatra record that he had set to play. He sprayed the Clorox to the beat:
"I've tried so not to give in.
I've said to myself
This affair never will go so well.
But why should I try to resist,
When baby, I know so well,
That I've got you under my skin."
He twirled in an impression of the famous singer while dancing with the handle of a mop in his hand.
"I'd sacrifice anything come what might, for the sake of havin' you near..." Another twirl. Gracefully, he spun the mop and moved it into a dip. "In spite of the warning voice that comes in the night, and repeats - how it yells in my ear..."
Quickly, he bounced the handle back up to him and then let it fall to the floor. The end of the handle landed on the tip of his foot and he kicked it back up, spun himself around, and caught the mop on its way back down.
"Don't you know, little fool, you never can win? Why not use your mentality - step up, wake up to reality? But each time I do just the thought of you, makes me stop just before I begin. 'Cause I've got you under my skin. Yes, I've got you under my skin!" A final squirt of Clorox ended the song and Hillary abruptly stopped into a theatrical pose.
"Bravo! Encore!" Hillary turned around and was shocked to see Bryce and Lara watching him, most amusedly. His face immediately turned a bright red, but he was sporting, and deeply bowed.
"Now, if you don't mind," Hillary spoke somewhat sternly, "I must be getting back to cleansing." Lara and Bryce looked at each other like two kids that had just caught their parents in a romantic act. Quickly, they both nodded and went in their separate directions.
The butler smiled and shook his head. "Kids."
Bryce rapidly pecked at his keyboard then rolled over to another computer and did the same. He was on three computers, actually, trying to find something, anything, on the Amulet. He sighed and dejectedly lowered his gaze from the harshness of the light of the screen.
"There's no more that I can do."
Meanwhile, there was plenty that Lara could do. She was now in her study, the one that she always came to for answers from her Father's collection of priceless books. Some of them weren't publicly priceless, but they were to Lara. They fed her a kind of energy that nothing else could- filling her to her extent with information. She traced her fingers along the spine of several books before reaching the one she wanted. Hastily, she yanked it out of the shelf and flipped it to a page that she had read only once in her life.
The Amulet of Ilse had never really intrigued her like many other works of mystery did. When her father wanted to read its legend to her, she would simply shake her head and beg for something "more exotic", in her past words. She wished that she hadn't scoffed at it so much. She might now know something that was invaluable to her mission that lied ahead of her. Shrugging off her regret of the past, Lara began to read the text.
Yes, everything that she had already known was in there, as well as everything Bryce had told her.
Except, she thought, the mystery of the Brother Amulet.
That, she feared, would be forever locked in anonymity. The disheartened woman laid the book down on her desk and propped her feet up.
There has to be something. My father would not let this be overlooked.
But what if he had overlooked this particular thing?
Nonsense, Lara, Lord Croft always knew every detail about objects that he spoke of. Never did he lead anyone into a state of ambiguousness; he always told what he knew and didn't hide anything from his little girl.
She paused for a moment, her elegant eyebrows furrowing.
Save the Illuminati ordeal.
Lara became frustrated and flung her feet off of the desk. She picked up the book from the table and prepared to throw it across the room, when the binding gave way.
The pages fluttered from their prison and onto the floor, leaving the book in ruins. Lara's eyes became wide as she realized that she had destroyed a tome from her father's collection. She would never forgive herself. She bent down to retrieve the scattered pages, but something else caught her eye.
Lara's slender hand moved toward the cover of the book and she peered inside. On the binding was written, 'Atlas 9.12.195. Fongafale'
Confusion swept over Lara's face, but she realized that this was just another one of her father's clever games. She smiled. Maybe this would lead her to what she needed to find. Carefully, she picked her way through the volumes of Atlases and came across number 9. She pulled it out and curiously flipped through all of the pages. No good. She turned to page 12. Same. Now 195 was her only hope. Taking in a sharp breath, she let the pages fall to the exact entry, and looked down.
It was a map of the Islands that were located in the Pacific Ocean. Lara trailed a finger across the page with a blank gaze. What did this all mean? Couldn't her father just TELL HER where everything was?
Course not, Lara smirked briefly at the memory of her father. He always wanted her to learn something new, and by herself. She concentrated harder. Fongafale... She searched for that word everywhere on the page, making sure she had checked every part, when finally...
"Yes! Here it is." Tuvalu- a tiny island northeast of Australia. That is where her attacker would be setting off to; therefore, that is where she needed to go. But in how much time? There were some things that she was certain wouldn't come from an Atlas.