Chapter 1

Bolivia June 25th 2006

The Andes were lovely this time of year Lara thought Pausing in her assent to look out north over Lake Titicaca, the waters stretched out below her like a plane of glass, and above the rock face rose into the clear azure sky.

Lara now a lively active 26 year old woman hung from the rock face, admiring the view for a moment longer before turning back to plot her accent.

"You know I think you forgot your climbing gear on purpose." Zip said over the hands free com unit attached to her right ear.

"Well you know. Makes it more of a challenge that way." She said traversing hand over had along a narrow ledge. "Besides it's just like climbing stairs." She jumped for a ledge above her.

"Yeah but I want to throw up every time you look down." Zip complained, then after a pause. "Hey it's Alistair. Pull up a head set."

Lara jumped for an other hand hold, but this one gave way beneath her grip she barely had time to launch herself away and into a more secure hold.

"Just got back from Florence I see?" She asked Alistair over the headset.

"Genova actually." He corrected her. "Although at this rate my dissertation will never see the light of day." Alistair was studying for his Masters in ancient civilisations at Oxford, and making little headway into his dissertation topic of Pre-Roman Northern Italian society.

"What are you doing in Bolivia anyway?" He asked.

As he spoke Lara launched herself in a graceful swan dive, toward a river carved plane that extended back into the cliff face and into the valley proper, but slightly misjudged her trajectory and hit the cliff face just below her destination.

"Ascending." She replied to Alistair as she flipped up into a hand stand and over onto level ground. "Alistair meet Tiwanaku a lovely Pre-Incan civilisation, currently in ruins."

"Delighted." Alistair said sarcastically, and then. "So why Tiwanaku?"

Peru: June 19th 2006

Lara walked into the dusty, crowded bar the scene brought back memories and not all of them good.

"There you are!" Called a familiar voice that sounded cultured and well rounded.

"Anaya." Lara gave the other woman a hug. "Good to see you again."

"Come. Sit. We have much to discus." The tall dark skinned woman lead her to a table toward the back of the bar, it was away from the other patrons and the closest the pair were going to get to privacy without paying for it.

"In your message you said something about the Tiwanaku? What is it, I know it's near here, but it's been well documented in previous years."

"Well." The other began hesitant to say. "Some three months ago the archaeologists there discovered a strange dais. Here are some of the photos I managed to get a hold of." She handed over a small manila envelope. "Thought you might be interested." Lara spilled the five by ten glossies out onto the rough wooden table top. They were taken from a way off and were not particularly good quality but it looked like something Lara had seen before, many years earlier. But it couldn't be. Could it?

Bolivia: June 26th 2006

A quick scouting of her surroundings showed the only way up into the valley was through a small cave behind the waterfall; from there she should be able to get to the shallow river that had over the past thousand years or so cut its way into the rock face. She planned out her rout up following it with her eyes her mind making a series of mental checkpoints. Then turned for one last look over Lake Titicaca, for a monument she imagined what it would be like to be down there swimming through those clear waters, she always felt so at ease and peaceful when she was swimming. Going for the next best thing Lara turned and in a graceful leap dived into the waterfalls plunge pool. For a brief moment she enjoyed the motion of swimming letting the crisp water clean the dust and sweat from her body as the sensation cleared the worries and doubts from her mind, then she surfaced again and swam for the farther shore.

Lara clambered up from the water and reached behind her to ring the water from her hair.

"Hey can you check your PDA?" Zip asked over the headset.

She did as instructed pulling the small yet exceptionally expensive device from her backpack and checked its display which currently showed the Wikipedia entry for the Tiwanaku culture.

"Seems ok." She said shoving it back into her pocket; the device was slim enough not to break the line of her khaki shorts, but probably not robust enough to withstand being sat on, changing her mind she returned it to her bag.

"Sweet!" Zip said obviously impressed. "The bloke said it was waterproof. You should be ok to swim with it." Lara jumped for a vine that had grown out of the cliff face. "Coerce if you eat it then you'll have to wait an hour."

In response to that Lara, who was now as high up the vine as she could get, looked down.

"Bitch." Zip cursed.

"Language boys." She chastised him as she jumped for a hanging vine, and started swinging.

"If you don't stop swinging soon the camera feed's going to make me sick." Alistair complained. She could imagine him turning green as she replied.

"You could always look away." That was her mantra on life, if you don't like it don't do it.

"How practical of you." Alistair said, as she let go of the vine and sailed through sheet of water tumbling into the valley below, before landing in narrow cave on the far side.

She waited a second for her eyes to adjust to the relative dimness of the cave after the scorching sun outside.

"Hey Lara you could use your light." Zip suggested.

"Now Zip." She replied as she picked her way over the pitted floor of the cave. "You really do rely on technology too much. What's wrong with good old nature?" She came back out into the sun and squinted.

"Find me something in nature that can to a thousand calculations a second and run UT. Then I'll be a convert." He replied.

She just sighed, scanning the rock face for a way back over to the waterfall where she would be able to follow the river bed.

There it was a narrow ledge that ran all the way back to the river mouth. How fortuitous she thought, and jumped to grab a hold of it.

She was about half way there, moving hand over hand down the ledge when the wining started again.

"Zip." She snapped having finally had enough of the tech's wining. "It would go a lot quicker if you would just shut up."

"Sorry." He said, she could just imagine him blushing and he recoiled from the computer screen at her voice.

She reached the river mouth; she could tell she had by the several pints of water a second being dumped on her head. She pulled up with her arms until she could get her feet under her and push up onto the river bed, now back on firm ground she began squeezing the excess water out of her hair and brushing her self down when there was a rumbling. She looked up to see a large bolder come lose and start rolling down the river bed toward her.

"Shit!" She cursed as she leaped out of the way catch on to the ledge she had traversed to get there.

"That was close." Zip agreed.

She began trekking up the river bed; the sun at her back began to dry her hair and cloths. Both her shorts and her top were water proof, the top was a rustic shade of chocolate brown that matched her hair. It was of course short sleeved and came to a point just below her ribs, leaving her stomach and sides moistly bare, it was the best way to stay cool in this weather.

She stopped dead; her path blocked by yet another waterfall, although this one was substantially lower. Grabbing onto a tree branch she flipped up onto it testing its strength before launching herself off of it to grab a hold of the top of the waterfall, this time she avoided a dousing and grabbed on at one side of the water flow.

"I don't see any climber." The voice came from the river channel above her. Lara ducked back down holding herself as close to the cliff face as she could to avoid being seen, and hoped her hands wee hidden by the small amount of brush on the narrow river bank. "I got all worked up thinking I could put someone down." He must be talking to someone on a radio she surmised; at the same time feeling disgusted by the way he talked about killing. Yes she would kill if she had to but she didn't enjoy it, not like he seemed to.

"Yeah well I can't shoot on site if I can't see nothing." He protested his voice becoming more distant as he walked away from her.

Silently Lara jumped up onto the river bank and pulled the grapple gun from her belt, the small device fired a magnetic dart that latched onto metal targets and was attached to a length of nylon cable that maid it good for climbing if there was metal nearby that was, and pulling things around, just like now. He didn't know what hit him and in his moment of confusion a sharp tug and he was airborne, he pulled himself up but Lara kicked him back down, he went for the Sub Machine Gun on a strap around his neck, and got a couple of shots off but they went wide as Lara kicked at his gun hand, the kick also had the affect of putting him off balance and he toppled backward off the waterfall, and landed with a sickening thud that made Lara wince.

She bowed her head for a moment.

"So who do you think he was?" Zip asked after a time.

"I don't know. He was deliberately unremarkable." Lara replied still following the river.

"Is that bad or good?" The tech pressed.

"It's deliberate." She replied surveying yet another waterfall. "Which is not good."

There were no nearby branches to help her get up this one.

"Oh for heavens sake." She sighed.