Wow! (grabs Lady Lara Croft and engulfs her in a huge hug) You perfect perfect reviewer, you! Thankyou!!! :-)
Underhand Measures
"This is the life." Bryce sighed and stretched, burying himself deeper into the armchair-like first class seat of the airplane to Japan. He and Hillary had just stowed their hand luggage and sat down, two of the first to board the plane, and they were now settling themselves as the other passengers filed down the aisles, mostly into economy class.
"I pity the poor bastards who have to take long flights in economy. Gets cramped," Hillary said, watching people go through into the rear cabin.
"Yep. We're lucky to be in Lara's employment, that's for sure."
Hillary reached up and started fiddling with the air conditioning controls and Bryce, for want of something to do whilst the plane readied for take off, started reading an article in the in-flight magazine about a day in the life of an Air France marketing manager.
Lara, meanwhile, was lying flat out on the bed in her quarters, staring up at the ceiling with Kurtis lying the opposite way next to her. They were also waiting until such time as they could do something more interesting, namely reconnaissance in the headquarters on the subject of the Periapt Tip.
"...Am I young, rugged and handsome?" Kurtis asked, fingers interlocking and pillowing his head.
"Yes. Definitely," replied Lara, twirling a stray strand of hair around her fingers.
"Do I look good in combat gear brandishing a gun?"
"You look fantastic."
"Am I believable as a man of mystery, caught up in a web of intrigue?"
"Certainly."
"Colin Farrell, 'The Recruit'."
"Correct," Lara enthused.
Kurtis raised his head and looked at Lara, surprised. "You're a Colin Farrell fan? Really? Would'a thought you wouldn't be taken in by all that tough-guy stuff."
"My turn," said Lara, blatantly ignoring him and turning over on her side, cuddling her pillow to her head.
Kurtis let his head fall back, thought for a second and then said, "Ok, got one."
"Am I female?"
"Yes."
"Do I wear a nice dress and carry a gun?"
"Yeah," said Kurtis, drifting off into fantasy land quite happily.
"Milla Jovovich, 'Resident Evil'."
"No way?!" Kurtis came back to reality with a bump and sat up, awestruck. "How did you get that after two questions?"
"You're more like Bryce than you may realise," Lara replied with a grin.
Sounding simultaneously, a gasp and a drawn out squeak of terror attracted the air-hostess at the front of the first class cabin.
"Sirs," she said, approaching the sources of the noise, "is everything ok?"
Hillary, fist shoved in his mouth, nodded, his eyes fixed on Bryce's laptop. Bryce, also staring at the monitor with eyes wide and breathing shallow, didn't answer. The air hostess crouched down to take a look and found a computer generated film of some kind of monster attacking another whilst interspersed shots pictured a young man in a green jacket desperately trying to open a door and escape the room. Then it cut to a less detailed picture, and suddenly Bryce's fingers started hitting frantically at the keyboard, making the young man draw a gun and start firing rapidly at an approaching monster. She opened her mouth to speak, but decided to leave the men to their computer game, keeping them awake long after all the other passengers had settled down to sleep. Judging from the scenery in the game, it was a good job they were wearing headphones to curb the noise, and, checking that their terrified whimpers weren't disturbing any nearby passengers, she walked back down the aisle, shaking her head in amusement.
"I can do a handstand and end it in the splits," Lara offered, sitting on the bed cross-legged.
Kurtis, facing her and sitting similarly, nodded towards the floor and said, "Go on then."
Smiling proudly, Lara got off the bed, moved towards the wall to give herself plenty of room and then tipped easily forward into a handstand, holding it for a moment before continuing on, landing with one foot slightly in the front of the other, and then slid effortlessly down into a perfect split. Holding her arms aloft to showcase her talents, she said, "Ta da!". Kurtis clapped enthusiastically and then leapt off the bed and took Lara's hands, pulling her up until she was able to find her feet and stand of her own accord.
"Nice," he said, "but I can do this. Look through the peephole." Lara, wondering what his talent was, did as she was told and peeked out into the corridor. Behind her, Kurtis took a breath and then put his farsee ability into play. His mind moved past Lara, through the door, and then hovered in the corridor, lying in wait for a Company agent on his way to the cafeteria. Just as the unfortunate worker reached the position of Kurtis' mind, an unknown force knocked his feet out from under him and he landed unceremoniously in a heap outside Lara's door, completely clueless as to what had just transpired.
Lara broke into giggles and turned around just as Kurtis came back to himself, staggering slightly but quickly recovering and breaking into a grin. "Did you do that?" Lara shrieked, impressed. Kurtis only laughed in return.
Bryce and Hillary didn't notice the other passengers waking up, nor had they noticed them go to sleep, engrossed as they were in the events of Bryce's copy of Silent Hill 2.
"Left, left, left," Hillary hissed. "No, no, the other left!"
"I'm lost!" Bryce cried.
"Check the map!"
"Why? I know where we are, just not where we're going."
"Well I know where we're going just not where we are."
Bryce directed his character through a set of doors and the in-game radio started crackling static, signalling the proximity of a nasty, weapon wielding, no doubt frightening monster.
"Monster!" Hillary squeaked.
"Where?! I can't see anything!"
"Behind you!"
The air-hostess shook her head again as she passed on the way for the refreshments trolley.
Lara hefted a desk-tidy and then, from her position on their extremely small imaginary baseball playing field in her quarters, hurled it at Kurtis, who expertly knocked it flying with his telekinetic powers and then scrambled for the wall designated first base as Lara dived for the desk-tidy. Kurtis slammed into the wall and Lara almost simultaneously snatched up the makeshift ball from where it had clattered to the floor.
The guards outside gave each other puzzled looks and then moved their ears to the door, trying to work out what the noise was about.
"I was in!" came a shout from inside the room.
"Rubbish! I got the desk-tidy before you'd even got past the desk!"
"No way! I was at first!"
"What the hell's going on?" one guard said to the other.
"Beats me," he replied, shrugging.
On the other side of the door Kurtis was about to call for an umpire's decision from the eight-ball on the bookcase when the alarm on his watch beeped. "Hey, it's time. The Company'll be switching onto night-staff any time now."
"And you're sure that the night shift is a skeleton crew?"
"When there aren't any missions pending, yeah, andthere'snothing on the schedule,so that's cool."
"Ok, then. Let's go." Lara tossed the desk-tidy to Kurtis, who dropped it back onto the desk, and they both made for the door.
"Run!" squeaked Hillary.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Bryce retorted.
"Excuse me," the man across the aisle said to the air hostess as she passed, "but what are they doing?"
"Playing a computer game. Would you like me to ask them to be quiet?"
"No, no, it's quite alright." The passenger gave the pair a curious look and then put on the entertainment system headphones and turned up the volume.
Lara and Kurtis stepped out of Lara's room. "We're going to the gym," Kurtis told the guards. "She's under my supervision. Keep the guard on the door, we'll be back later and I don't want to have to go searching for whoever's supposed to be on duty here, got it?"
The guards nodded and the two adventurers set off down the corridor towards the gym.
"So," whispered Lara, "where to?"
"The main server. We can check the mission files from there without it showing up on the terminal access list."
"I thought that there weren't any files because The Company was doing this on the quiet?"
"There are files, they're just very hard to find. Yours truly, however, knows where to look." Kurtis smiled smugly and Lara laughed at him.
"Why do I get the feeling you know a lot more than you're supposed to?"
"Let's just say that when this whole Periapt thing started and I was brought in as consultant I didn't waste any time sitting in my room playing baseball with a desk-tidy."
"It was your idea," Lara retorted.
They took a long circuitous route through The Company that would confuse anybody catching them on the security cameras, eventually coming to a lift in the far reaches of the building. Kurtis slipped the electronic lock pick that Lara had packed from out of his pocket and hooked it up to the keypad barring access to the lift. He then handed it to Lara, who looked left and right to check the corridor was clear before tapping in the combination of buttons that Bryce had taught her that would set the gadget to work.
It took only a few seconds for the code to be broken, and with a beep on the keypad the lift doors slid open, inviting them in. They stepped inside wordlessly and Kurtis pressed the button for the top floor. Up they rode, the journey taking a full minute, neither of them speaking as if their voices would give them away even though there was no-one to hear.
At last the doors opened again, and they stepped out into a long corridor heading away from them with no turn offs. It was lined with servers, terminals and wires, the brains of The Company, all lit by a red tinged light that played up the silver components but played down the dark background, increasing the contrast of the entire area for anyone wishing to navigate their way through the labyrinth of electronics.
"You any good with computers?" Kurtis asked.
"Not too bad."
Kurtis moved to a terminal, its keyboard almost hidden amongst the other components of the computer, and tapped in a few directions to open a directory and then stepped away to leave the way clear for Lara. "Look in that directory. See what you can find on the Periapt Shard. I'll check on this one." He moved to another keyboard on the other side of the corridor and started tapping away at the keys, bringing up window after window of code and files at a speed far faster than anything that Bryce had built could run. Lara smiled wryly to herself at the thought that poor Bryce was missing all this as she started her own search into the files.
A few silent minutes passed and then she found it – the location of the Periapt Tip within The Company. "Kurtis," she hissed, "I've found it." He darted over to her and examined her screen, filtering the information for only the useful.
"Level thirteen, room nine, safe six. Perfect." He smiled triumphantly.
"I tried to bring up the security codes for the area but they're locked."
"It's ok, we'll break in. It's too risky to try and hack into those files. For now I suggest we shut down here, go and check the area out and then go back to the room and make a detailed plan that we can implement tomorrow night."
"What if they want us to go after the cult leader tomorrow?"
"Then we panic. Cheney's not told me any plans so I think we have time to wait, and I don't want to risk rushing this."
Lara raised an eyebrow and asked, "Would Cheney have told you any plans?"
At that, Kurtis looked worried for a second but then quashed it, returning to his earlier semi-confident state. "Yeah. 'Course he would." Lara wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, her or himself, but she stood by and let him close down the terminals and then followed him back to the lift all the same.
"Sir, are you – "An air-hostess, taking in Bryce and Hillary's dishevelled appearances with bags under their eyes and a wild look of skittishness about them, was about to enquire if the two men were ok when her colleague put a hand on her arm to stop her.
"They're fine," she said. "Playing some kind of game."
"They're fine?" repeated the other hostess, incredulous as she eyed their paranoid behaviour.
"They haven't slept and they seem to be more involved in the game than is probably healthy, but, yeah, they're fine."
Kurtis peeked around the corner to check that the coast was clear and then darted around it, keeping close to the wall and moving as quietly as he could, Lara close behind. He stopped as a security camera began to swing towards them, expertly staying just outside of its view, and then, as it swung back the other way, hurried along behind it and ducked into another corridor.
He stopped dead, holding one arm out to halt Lara who bumped into him but managed to keep her whole body behind him. "Don't move," he whispered. "If we stay right here we're in a blind spot but if we move either way we'll be on their cameras. Now, pretty much every set of cameras I've come across in this building hit a point every twelve arcs where the area between them is a blind spot for about ten seconds if you're in the centre or three if you're nearer the edge. Room nine is the door just in front of us to the right. Looks like we can safely stand at the door for about five seconds if we time it right, seven tops."
"How do we know when the blind spot is coming up?" Lara asked, eyeing the cameras.
"You keep an eye on that one and say every time it swings away so it can't see us. I'll do the same. Eventually we'll start synching up as the cameras reach their weak point, then when we both call it at the same time, that's when we're in the blind spot."
"Take a rehearsal now for tomorrow night?"
"Sure."
"Ok," said Lara, "mine's turning away now." They each reported the moment they thought their camera had turned away to a view not encompassing the door, gradually finding their voices getting closer and closer together in timing as the mismatched paths of the cameras phased themselves into the major security flaw Lara and Kurtis were depending on
"Ok," they found themselves saying in unison, and Kurtis took a step to the door and stood by it, counting the seconds in his head whilst he kept an eye on his camera, the first to come back around with its shorter arc. He counted to six before he stepped back to Lara, just dodging the camera's line of sight.
"Six seconds," he said. "That's long enough to use the lock pick, right?"
"Easily," said Lara. "So what are we going to do once we're in the room?"
"I'll try and find out what security's in there from the computer in my quarters. I'm pretty sure I can do it undetected. Then I'll come back to you and we can make a full plan."
"So now all we need to do is get back to my quarters without anyone knowing we were on the other side of the building to the gym."
"Right," said Kurtis, nodding and swallowing. "Easy."
"Easy," agreed Lara, equally apprehensive.
They dodged the camera behind them and started back the way they had come, stopping and starting as the cameras allowed until they eventually reached one of the main corridors, well travelled during normal working hours, but thankfully empty late at night. Or so they thought.
Staring up at the camera they were hiding from in the corner of the ceiling, Kurtis' attention was attracted by the sudden movement of red LED letters flashing up on one of the many electronic notice boards. He froze as he read the words, his breathing silenced in shock. '#2298RC Incoming. Prisoner Detail, Critical Wounded.'
"Oh my god." He grasped Lara's hand where she was standing behind him, glancing around to check that no-one was coming.
"What?" she asked, startled by his sudden movement.
"There's a mission coming in."
"Now? Here?!" Lara fell back against the wall, dread overtaking her as she followed Kurtis' gaze to read the mission status. "There'll be guards and medics everywhere!"
"And that's not all." Kurtis swallowed dryly, eyes still fixed on the flashing red letters. "Two two niner eight RC is the Rebirth Cult mission – they're bringing in the cult leader you're supposed to kill and that not only means that we have way too little time, it also means that Cheney'll be coming along this corridor to meet him any moment now."