Chapter 2: Manhunt
Lara's hands were now perfectly clean, but in her conscience-stricken mind they still had Werner Von Croy's blood all over them. She stared out at the dark skies hanging above the city, hypnotized by the rain falling monotonously. "What's happening to me?" She sighed and was about to close the window when she heard sirens outside.
She couldn't see the police cars from here – the window only featured a drab view of the ratty alley between the Chantell and a two-star hotel. But it didn't take a deductive genius to figure out what was going on when she heard the main entrance open and several wet boots went tramping up the stairwell. Someone had heard the gunshots and called the cops.
Lara instantaneously realized what she had become: A suspect in the Monstrum case. Wanted by the police. If they caught her, she would have a hard time explaining her presence at the crime scene, and the Parisian police was more than a little eager to get the Monstrum executed. "But they wouldn't think I'm a serial killer, would they? Lady Lara Croft, the famous British adventurer, an inspiration to people all over the world ..."
However, Lara had changed recently, and so had people's opinions about her. After she had gone missing, presumed dead, and then suddenly returned from Egypt, things just weren't the same. Her former friends stayed far away from her and she didn't let them get close. "Lady Lara Croft, the forgotten British recluse, a stranger to people all over the world ... Would anyone really miss me?"
But what it all boiled down to could be expressed in a single question: Did she want her life to end like this or not?
Four armed policemen came running into the corridor and took aim at their suspect. "The building is surrounded. Give yourself up," they ordered.
"No."
Lara easily vaulted over the windowsill. For a splitsecond, she accompanied the raindrops on their swift descent, before grabbing a drainpipe and clutching the slippery surface to slow down. A few metres above the ground, her grip finally weakened enough for gravity to drag her all the way down to the most unforgiving pavement she'd ever encountered. Lara landed on her back in a freezing puddle and was about to stand when a clammy hand reached out and gripped her ankle.
Lara cocked her eye at the owner of the hand. A man in his late sixties lay in a heap of garbage at the alley wall. He wore the same shabby rags he had undoubtedly worn for a number of years now. A dirty, grey beard hung from his pale face and various syringes were scattered around his body. His pupils' diameter measured about one millimeter. "Tombes de la lumiere," he mumbled, giving a sickly smile. "Fortifies par les tenebres ... L'horreur approche."
Lara broke away from the drug addict's grip and ran down the alley. The raindrops relentlessly pricked her body like hundreds of cold needles. Behind her, the man let out a hoarse laughter and his words echoed through the alley: "L'HORREUR! L'HORREUR APPROCHE! MONSTRUM!"
Lara dashed for the wide street that the alley opened on to. She could hear sirens somewhere to her right. When she was about five metres from the end of the alley, the source of the noise came skidding into view. The huge white van spun around 90 degrees before stopping with the back doors facing the alley. Lara stopped to see the doors burst open as two trained dogs leapt out and started running through the alley to bite her face off.
Lara's eyes darted around until they found an old-looking door in the wall to her left. She looked back at the bloodthirsty Dobermans, then rushed up to the door and let her shoulder connect with the fragile wood. The door swung back and she found herself in a derelict, cockroach-riddled hall with empty cardboard boxes lying everywhere and a long, filthy staircase leading up in the middle. "Paris, city of beauty. Well, they don't show this in the brochures."
Behind her, the cacophony of barks grew louder. Lara sprinted up the staircase. By the time she reached the second floor, the animals were already scurrying into the hall, closely followed by armed cops. Lara cursed herself for not closing and bolting the door behind her.
The staircase led to a dimly lit corridor with cobwebs hanging all over the ceiling. Lara ran to her right towards a dead end. Her only hope was to jump through the window in the middle of the white wall, but it looked too narrow. She cast a brief glance over her shoulder. The curs were only a few metres behind her.
Lara stopped in front of the window. It was way too narrow. Escape was now utterly impossible. The dogs jumped up at her, slobber dripping from their razorsharp teeth. Lara held her arms out in front of her face and clenched her eyes shut ...
As the Dobermans collided with her body, Lara stumbled back and felt glass shatter all around her. Suddenly, she was falling through cold air. Then, she landed on a crammed plastic bag, rolled off and landed once more on wet cobblestones.
Lara's eyelids fluttered open. She was lying in a messy courtyard. A throbbing migraine pervaded her head as she slowly got up, scant of breath. Her eyes looked up to meet the glares of the growling Dobermans perched on the windowsill above her. One of them held her old brown backpack in its mouth. Apparently, the dog had ripped off the backpack just before she fell out the window. Besides having a certain sentimental value, that pack contained her wallet, passport and cash.
"Damn cur," Lara muttered and darted off through the nearest doorway.
---
In a warm office many miles away from the seedy district Lara Croft was being chased through, Commissioner Mirepoix stood at the window and contemplated the view of the dark metropolis. He had worked here for years, but never encountered any criminal as gruesome and elusive as the Monstrum. And now there had been another victim, some defenceless old guy on Rue Valise.
The commissioner sighed and sat back down at his desk. He sipped his cup of pitchblack coffee, let his fingers rest on the familiar keyboard and started writing the report:
Central National Bureau, Paris
Commissioner Mirepoix, Special Crimes Investigation Force
To the Préfecture de Police.
REPORT ON RECENT SERIAL ATROCITIES WITHIN THE CAPITAL
The man paused, pondering whether "atrocities" was the right word to use in this context. These reports would usually have the word "murders" instead, but in his opinion, that wasn't enough to describe the Monstrums' actions. They weren't just ordinary murders ... He shuddered, took another sip of coffee and continued writing:
As yet, no significant arrests have been made for this latest spate of 'Monstrum' killings in the capital. There have been seventeen reported murders so far. It would appear to be the work of a single, highly psychotic perpetrator.
The press have sensationalised this latest outbreak as "The Monstrum's Dark Renaissance", referring to similar atrocities in the capital over the last decade, and possibly as far back as the 1950's. There are definite links to atrocities in other European cities going back at least fifty years.
Forensics have made no headway regarding the bizarre metallic eruptions found on the bodies of all victims. At present, nothing appears to link any of the individuals involved. There have been significant numbers of casualties within Parisian gangland factions.
The name of the latest victim was just released – a professor Werner Von Croy. A female was seen leaving his apartment. Described as Caucasian, brunette, about 1.8m and of slim build, she was wearing jeans, denim jacket and a pony tail. She is dangerous and probably armed. Officers are being advised to use extreme caution when arresting the suspect. Her apprehension should be made top priority.
Mirepoix leaned back in his chair and emptied his cup of coffee. He stood and turned around to look out the window. Somewhere out there, that mysterious brown-haired woman was on the run. Whether she was guilty or not, he and his investigation force were going to do all they could to catch her.
---
Lara ran across the industrial rooftops, closely followed by the green police helicopter that had been hovering around her for the last ten minutes. Its searchlight effortlessly cut through the rain to envelop her body in a blinding white glare. Expert snipers inside the chopper fired their rifles every 4-5 seconds. The fugitive could nearly feel the heat of the bullets whistling by, just inches away from piercing her legs.
A male voice roared through a megaphone somewhere in the chopper: "SUSPECT SPOTTED ON ROOF!"
"You don't say," Lara muttered.
"THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!"
"I don't even have any weapons!" Lara yelled back.
Naturally, the officers couldn't hear her. "SURRENDER! THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!"
Lara found herself cornered on the edge of the rooftop. The fall to the alley below was several storeys high. The snipers in the helicopter were still shooting, forcing her to keep moving. Lara's eyes fixed on a white box at the top of a drainpipe on the brick wall in front of her. The jump from this rooftop to the pipe looked about four yards long, but she had no choice. Either she would get her brains blown out here, or she'd die on the pavement below, or she'd grab hold of the pipe. Lara prayed for the last-mentioned possibility as she took a running jump from the rooftop and sailed through the chilly air.
Apparently, the prayer was heard. Her left hand managed to get a weak grip on the slippery box at the top of the pipe. Her right hand immediately flew up to aid its counterpart, but the box quickly succumbed to the woman's weight and fell off the wall.
Lara let out a high-pitched shriek, which abruptly ended when she landed in a rusty dumpster. The helicopter flew off above her, the pilot realizing they couldn't follow her into the narrow alley. "Suspect has escaped," the guy with the megaphone declared, then added: "Merde."
"Ugh, my head," Lara groaned as she climbed out of the dumpster. "Way too many police. What was that adress?" She reached into a pocket in her jeans and pulled out the card Werner had given her minutes before his untimely demise. She glanced at the adress of a "Mlle. Margot Carvier" and started walking down the alley.
---
It only took Lara a quarter to find the woman's apartment. She rang the bell and heard Madame Carvier's voice seep through the intercom system next to the wooden door: "Qui est là?"
"Mademoiselle Carvier, it's Lara Croft. I need your help."
Carvier promptly opened the door. The professor was in her late sixties and wore crescent-shaped, orange glasses and distinguished, formal clothes. She was a historian and academic at the Dept. of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and had been involved in recent archaeological digs beneath the Louvre. "Miss Croft," she said, running her green eyes over Lara. "I recognize you from photos and Werner's description. Come in."
"Thank you," Lara said and stepped into the woman's humble abode. A few colourful fish swam around aimlessly in a small aquarium. The wood crackled away in the fireplace. The whole flat had an overall cozy atmosphere that Werner's place had completely lacked. Lara noticed the newspaper on the coffee table had an article about the Monstrum's sixteenth victim, a teenage girl who had been mutilated in a backstreet not far from the Eiffel Tower.
"An evil night to be out alone, Miss Croft. Our streets are not safe anymore."
"Mademoiselle Carvier, I have just come from Werner's apartment."
"And how is Werner?" You could tell by her tone that she and Werner were more than just colleagues.
Lara closed her eyes and prepared to deliver the bad news. "I'm afraid that Werner ... is dead."
"Dead?!" Behind the crescent-shaped glasses, Carvier's eyes seemed on the verge of falling right out.
"Yes, and I don't have time to waste. I'm being chased all over Paris," Lara said.
"How was Werner killed? Tell me what happened," Carvier ordered.
Lara gave a deep sigh. If she'd wanted an interrogation like this, she would have gone with the police. "It's all a bit vague. I arrived at his apartment today. He was babbling with fear."
"He said he'd tried to contact you," Carvier said.
"He did," Lara confirmed. "I never expected that. Not after Egypt."
"Werner has been fearful for his life. He accepted a commission five weeks ago. Since then, he's been acting strangely, jumping at shadows. He even left a package with me for safe-keeping."
"Package?"
"His notebook, adressed to you," Carvier explained.
"Who was that commission from?" Lara asked, even though she already knew the answer. Werner had told her himself. 'I'm tracking five Obscura paintings for a client called Eckhardt, but he's a psychopath ...'
"The client's name was Eckhardt. He wanted Werner to research something called the "Obscura paintings". Werner approached me at my department at the Louvre."
"Were you able to help him?"
"A little, I think. Poor Werner was clearly terrified."
"Werner didn't scare easily," Lara remarked.
"He felt he was being stalked," Carvier elaborated.
"He could well have been. The "Monstrum" is running around Paris, according to the press. You mentioned Werner's notebook earlier, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes, his field notebook. He said he wanted you to have it, if anything happened to him."
"If he left his notebook, he really was spooked," Lara stated.
"You still haven't explained what happened," Carvier reminded the woman.
"We argued, I can remember that. And – gunfire!"
"Gunfire?!" Carvier repeated, dumbfounded. "Werner was shot? Did you kill him?"
"I can't remember. It's all a blur," Lara replied truthfully.
Carvier's eyes narrowed. "Miss Croft, I strongly suggest that you talk to the police."
Lara rolled her eyes. "If I'd wanted to kill Werner, I could have done that in Egypt!"
"You don't look too convinced yourself," Carvier remarked with a voice as cold as the rain outside.
"I'm not going to waste any more time here! Do you have the notebook?"
"I do. It's safe for the moment."
"I really am going to need Werner's notebook," Lara implored.
"Somebody killed Werner, and you say you don't remember clearly what happened? Perhaps the police are right in suspecting you," Carvier said.
"I never killed Werner!"
"I think you'd better leave, Ms Croft."
"The notebook?"
Carvier sighed and walked into the kitchen, where she dug a musty brown notebook out from a cabinet and handed it to her guest. "I am not sure this is the right thing to do, but I must respect what Werner wanted."
"The right choice, Mademoiselle," Lara said, slipping the book into her pocket.
Carvier opened a white door and stepped into her bedroom next to the kitchen. "And now you had better go; the police will be here any minute."
"Police?"
Carvier shut the door and locked it. Her voice was still audible from the other side: "I called them when you turned up on my doorstep. It was for ... insurance."
"You're all heart." Before leaving, Lara snatched a pen from the desk. She quickly found a window five yards above the backstreet. A police car pulled up outside and two gendarmes came rushing out, probably the ones Carvier had called. Lara patiently waited for them to enter the apartment building and disappear from sight. She then hopped out the window, landing roughly on the cobblestones, and fled down the dingy backstreets, looking for a safe hiding place. Unlike the Parisian police, her first priority was to get some much needed sleep.
---
She hangs from the ledge again, so close to the exit of this hellish ancient temple. Sunlight of the first dawn of the year 2000 comes flowing in around Werner Von Croy's figure as he stands in the doorway and reaches out a bony, shaking hand to save his protégé. "Give me your hand, child!"
"Good to see you again, Werner," she groans. Her fingers slowly, but surely slide down from the ledge and there's no doubt in her mind that her fall into the abyss beneath is both inevitable and imminent.
"I couldn't leave you!"
The rock collapses, sealing the doorway. She falls screaming into a black sea of darkness and drowns there in feelings of fear and desperation ...
Lara's eyes snapped open and she awoke from a nightmare slightly worse than her reality. She slowly got up from the floor of the old, graffiti-covered train resting abandoned in a weed-plagued yard. How long had she slept here? Her watch was in the backpack the trained dog had ripped from her, but she could tell by the sky outside that it had to be about 6 A.M. "I must've slept at least five hours, and I still feel tired as hell ..."
Lara sat down on the cleanest seat of the filthy train car and produced the notebook and pen she'd gotten in Carvier's flat. Right now, she just wanted to get her thoughts formulated and down on paper. She found an empty page and started writing:
Of all the terrors in the world today, the thing that haunts me still is Egypt. That, and Werner's death. I could never forgive him for what he did, but no one deserved to die like that, not for some damn paintings. Someone has to pay. I just have to decide who. And how!
---
A/N: As you might have deduced, I am more than a little influenced by the infamous "lost text" of AoD ...
