Well, here's this week's update. Quite a hard one to write, and an even harder one to name.

Thanks again, Lady Lara Croft! :-) I quite liked the bidding too. Hee Hee.

Just to clarify, Gero is the name of the cult leader that we've been hearing about all this time but know very little about. His name was indirectly mentioned last chapter and this chapter we actually...well, I won't give it away. And all this time you thought he was just a plot device...hee hee.
By the way - 'Broad Street', as mentioned in this chapter, is a famous area in the city of Birmingham where all the pubs, bars and clubs are situated - sort of a party central on Friday nights.

No Trust Within Myself, All My Faith Lies In You

Forced to land on suitable ground and away from the cave complex where the cult leader, Gero, was believed to be hiding, the team were left with a trek of five klicks across sand and desert. Most of the way was spent in silence for Lara and Kurtis, walking in the middle of the others almost as prisoners, the team laughing and joking around them as soldiers are seemingly wont to do. Lara wondered about Kurtis again, picturing him all too easily as the handsome, cocky Legionnaire he must have been, gambling and playing around with his friends off duty, standing rigid and dutiful in rank when working. It fit. Kurtis was just that kind of man.

She realised she was staring at him when he did, looking over to meet her gaze and smiling crookedly at her obvious interest, embarrassing her. Yes, Kurtis was just that kind of man.

"I know I'm devilishly handsome," he sighed dramatically, "but you should really watch where you're going, it's pretty rocky."

"You keep telling yourself that, Kurtis," Lara shot back.

"What, you weren't admiring me?"

"Actually, I was planning on killing you."

"Sure you were." Kurtis shot her that smile again, snapped off a sloppy salute and then quickened his pace to catch up with the leaders of the group, leaving her trudging along on her own, scowling after him in annoyance. Yes, it was all just an act with him, but it still didn't stop him being intensely infuriating.

"Oh my god!" squealed Bryce, bursting into Hillary's hotel room where he had just begun to settle after their recent check-in. "Have you seen the TV?!" Without waiting for an answer he dashed across the room, leaving the door wide open, and flicked a switch hiding on the wall. The mirror hanging opposite the bed came out from the wall and then spun round to reveal a huge widescreen plasma TV on the other side, which fitted itself neatly back against the wall and then turned itself on to the hotel channel. "And the shower – you can set the shower to water temperature by the degree!"

Hillary looked bemused. "Why?" he asked, genuinely.

Bryce blinked, finding he didn't really have an answer. "Because – it's cool."

After what seemed like hours, Marcus stopped the group by an outcrop of rocks, partially overgrown, and checked his GPS system.

"That's it," he said, gesturing to the grey rocks to their side. Shoving the GPS back in his pocket, he marched forward and grabbed some of the desert plants, pulling them out of the way to reveal a small, dark opening at the base of the outcrop. "Royce," he said to one of the members, "take point."

"Yes, Sir," Royce complied, and he stepped forward and crouched down into the hole, sliding forward onto his front and pulling himself in. A few moments of rustling and scraping and then the sound of booted feet on impacted dust echoed back out to the others, followed by Royce's voice. "It's a bit of a squeeze for the first few feet but then it opens out."

Marcus jerked his head at another soldier and then at Lara, sending them in. Lara obediently took the few steps to the entrance and then dropped to her knees and slid lithely into the darkness, bringing her legs around to the front once the tunnel gained in width and height and dropping down a short steep decline into a depression at the bottom – a dried up plunge pool. The other two were already creeping forwards along a tunnel that began as a natural cave but quickly became a man made construction, swinging their torches back and forth into the darkness with their guns aimed ready. A scuffle and a thud behind Lara alerted her to Kurtis' presence, but she didn't look round, instead lighting one of the flares she'd smuggled back from the mansion, uncaring if anybody asked where she'd got it from. She used flares instead of torches and that was that. She no longer cared about trying to maintain the appearance of being a prisoner or under control.

More thuds echoed behind her as she walked into the tunnel, taking in her surroundings and treading carefully, quietly.

No one spoke, not even as the tunnel opened out into a huge torch lit cavern, empty save for a long ledge opposite their entrance high up on the wall, a doorway upon it leading back into blackness within the walls. The team fanned out along the walls as they entered, covering the numerous ground level exits around them leading into yet more darkness, and awaiting orders from their leader, Marcus.

Marcus scanned the room to assess it and, maintaining silence, signalled with his hands for those furthest from him to start off down one tunnel and the rest to follow him, Lara and Kurtis included. He was taking no chances with them.

Lara's group, still looking around them for danger, weapons at the ready, crept off towards their nearest tunnel and ventured inside, spreading their light around them to ward off the blackness. The walls were dry and dusty, flaking off against Lara's hands as she trailed her fingers along. Still staring around her, partially in wonder, partially to ground herself in the unfamiliar surroundings, Lara's eyes lit on Marcus just ahead of her and she realised that he had stopped.

She peered over his shoulder and immediately saw his reason – his torch light had bounced back from a dead end, revealing nothing but rock, and he was now shining it around carefully looking for anything he may have missed. Slightly perturbed by the apparently useless tunnel, Lara turned back to look the way they had come and then stopped dead as she saw over the shoulders of the others behind her as they carried on unwittingly, Gero.

Bryce and Hillary, slightly unnerved by the foreign territory, walked carefully into the bar, randomly picked from a number of establishments on what appeared to be the Japanese version of Broad Street. They gained a few curious glances but nothing quite as serious as the reaction Hillary had been envisaging where the moment they had stepped in the music had been turned off and everyone had stopped what they were doing to stare. He smiled nervously at those he passed and threaded his way through the patrons behind Bryce, who was making his way to the bar.

"Two vodka and cokes!" Bryce shouted as he approached the bar. The barmaid his order had been directed to looked confused and said something high pitched and Japanese that presumably meant, 'What?".

"Vod-ka and coke!" he repeated, accentuating his syllables and pointing to himself and Hillary rapidly and repeatedly, obviously a subscriber to the theory that any foreign language is just English slowed down and turned up.

The barmaid shook her head and squeaked some more Japanese and Bryce, sighing, plucked a notepad and pen from his pocket. "I was afraid of this," he muttered to Hillary, and then proceeded to scribble down a picture of a bottle and the Russian flag next to it, and the universal Coca Cola logo, and then drew a massive '2' beneath it. He waved it at the barmaid, who took it, examined it carefully and then, with a look of realisation crossing her face, beamed back at Bryce and served up two lightening fast vodka and cokes. She grinned proudly as she presented them to her guests and Bryce, accepting them, grinned back.

Lara snatched up her gun and aimed it at the cult leader, causing Kurtis behind her to give a 'Whoa!' and leap back, snapping his head back the way he had come to see what Lara was challenging even as his Boron X was being raised. Scuffling and the sound of weapons being readied filled the tunnel as the Company agents all leapt to their senses, alerted by Lara's commotion.

Gero was almost ethereal. A pinkish glow radiated out from his deep red clothes of baggy silk trousers and shirt, bathing his deathly pale skin in a more human light and shining off his long golden hair in shades of orange and fuchsia. He was young, so young. Lara was taken aback by his appearance, so unlike that she had imagined of an older man with tanned skin and black robes. His eyes, however, were exactly like she had imagined. Black, hard and mocking.

"Lara Croft," he sighed, his accent distinctly South African, "you're here at last."

Lara didn't answer, just rehandled her gun and fixed a steely gaze down its barrel.

"Please," he continued, "join me in my office."

With that, he turned and began to walk away, slowly and easily, fearlessly. Shots rang out as, without orders, everybody opened fire, but the bullets only passed right through him, creating little concentric circles of ripples as though they were stones falling in water, tangible objects passing through an illusion.

"This way, Lara," his voice echoed in her ears, unheard by anyone else except apparently for Kurtis, who stared in Lara's direction as if it were she who had uttered the words.

The wonderment was broken when Marcus shoved his way down the line to the middle, addressing the group. "Move back out. Be alert."

They did as they were told, Lara only because there was nothing else she could do. It was as if Gero wanted her, knew she was coming, awaited her purpose. Rather than instilling fear, Gero had roused her curiosity.

"Chair," the barmaid said carefully.

"Good! Table," said Bryce, pointing to the table nearest the bar, unoccupied.

"Table," she repeated. "Table." She looked to Bryce for confirmation that her pronunciation was correct.

"Idiot," Hillary enunciated slowly, pointing to Bryce and grinning.

The team emerged back into the cavern, meeting their comrades reappearing from their own tunnel.

"Dead end, Sir," the leader of the second team said.

"Same here," Marcus replied, looking around suspiciously. "We saw Gero."

"Gero?!"

"Yeah…"

Silence reasserted itself as those present spread out, wandering throughout the area to investigate cautiously, as Lara just stood looking around, not bothering to try and fathom. Clearly Gero was playing a whole different ball game, and until she'd learnt the rules, it was up to him to take the lead. He'd do something soon enough.

"This may not be as easy as I thought," Kurtis said in a low voice, coming to stand beside her and staring around, wary.

"He's just playing with us," Lara replied calmly.

"Cat and mouse, huh?"

"You ought to know," Lara said sweetly, turning and taking a few steps away.

Suddenly the floor beneath her shook violently, a deep rumbling accompanying the movement as Lara stumbled to keep her footing, instinctively bending her knees. Shouts of surprise bounced around the walls and she looked over to find Kurtis fallen to one knee, his palms grazing against the rough floor as he tried to find his feet, clearly shaken by the sudden tremors. Staggering over to him, feeling as if the whole cavern was about to come crashing down around her, she took firm hold of his arm and pulled him up, taking a jarring step back to keep their balance as Kurtis fell against her.

A massive crash followed by the sound of breaking rock and bouncing shards behind them made them gasp as they spun round, to see a huge golden spear tearing up through the floor right next to Marcus, almost piercing his forearm as it slashed through the air, others like it shooting up around the whole cavern at twisted angles only a split second later, each new lance tearing Lara and Kurtis' attention away from the previous one as they held onto each other for balance, too confused to contemplate the danger. Screams and shouts leapt from their team-mates as the spears surrounded each one, dangerously close to their limbs, capturing them in cramped cages from which they could not squeeze or force to escape. A cacophony of cracking rocks and ringing metal heralded the arrival of dozens of the spikes against the entrance into the cavern, only centimetres apart, blocking escape. As quickly as the attack had begun, it stopped, leaving Kurtis and Lara still grasping onto each other, their eyes darting around at the trapped soldiers who struggled and called for help, the two Company prisoners now the only ones left free.

"What the hell?" Kurtis shouted.

Lara pulled herself from his grasp still lingering from the quake and ran towards the nearest cage, pulling and pushing at the metal stakes in an effort to free the one trapped, grunting in exertion as she pitched her entire strength against it, fruitlessly. A warm hand on her shoulder stilled her movements and she turned to look up at Kurtis.

"Leave 'em."

"Leave them? We might need them."

Kurtis chuckled. "Really, Lara. The way things have been going, you don't think they're under orders to kill us? You're supposed to die anyway, but I seriously doubt that Cheney has any intention of letting me get away, and whatever happens I don't think they're going to be anything but trouble for us. I figured we'd probably have to fight our way out of this, now Gero has done us a favour. Accept it."

Lara glanced back at the prisoners, struggling and quietly protesting, most too panicky to bother listening to the conversation. "We're not just walking out of here with the Tip. Gero's seen to that, and if he's as powerful as he seems – "

Kurtis gently took Lara's hand from where it rested on a spear and plucked it off as he spoke, bringing it slowly down to her side. "They and their guns will be absolutely no use."

Grudgingly accepting the logic in his argument, Lara sighed. "All right."

"Ok." Kurtis marched over to where Marcus was held and reached through the bars to fumble around in his pocket, smiling mockingly at the helpless man as he did so. A moment later he fished out the Periapt Tip, tossed it in the air and caught it again triumphantly and, smiling, turned to Lara. "You want a sign of trust? You got it." He sent the Tip sailing through the air and Lara, totally surprised, reacted quickly and reached up, catching it before it could smash to the ground.

She examined it in her hands, turning it over and admiring the way it refracted the available light in patterns of colours and rays, a smaller more delicate version of the Periapt Shards, more beautiful and translucent in its thinner state.

"You're trusting me?" Lara asked, a hint of surprise in her voice.

'On the contrary', Kurtis thought, 'I'm begging you to trust me, even though I don't deserve it', but that thought would always stay unvoiced. "Here," was his jovial answer, an echo back to the last time they had agreed to take faith. Smiling again, he turned and sauntered off towards one of the tunnels at the back of the cavern. "Come on," he called over his shoulder, "we need to find a way out of here."