IX. Discovery

"Brazil." Samus repeated back to Lara as she stared with a scrutinizing look on her face.

"Five-hundred meters below it actually." Lara corrected her.

While Samus had showered and changed, Creto had prepared a meal of re-hydrated pasta and chicken from the rear storage areas of the ship. Plates were presented out of a slot in the wall and a table and metallic cylinders acting as stools had risen out of the floor. Samus emerged adorned in a new jumpsuit, a towel across her shoulders just as the last plate was presented. She immediately grabbed it, sat herself on a metallic stool, and began to dig eagerly into her meal. She ate vigorously without speaking a word, or even looking up. After her first plate, she started on a second and began to ask Lara and Joanna about themselves and their whereabouts. Lara spoke for the both of them while Joanna stared through the red lenses of her I.R. Scanner, still not letting her guard down. As the facts came out, Samus had stopped her incessant eating. She now sat with her fork half-way to her mouth. She had been sitting that way for just under five minutes.

"And you say the earth year is nineteen-hundred and ninety-eight?" she asked.

"Mmm-hmm." Lara replied around a mouthful of noodles.

Samus then looked to Joanna.

"Don't look at me." Joanna shrugged. "It's two-thousand, twenty-three by my reckoning."

"Creto?"

"I'm afraid Ms. Croft is correct, Samus." Creto replied. "My scans indicate that we are currently located four-hundred, thirty-one feet below the surface of what was then known as the Brazilian rainforest. I have also confirmed the date via an orbiting satellite."

"Are you able to determine how we arrived here?"

"Not as yet. Many of my memory banks were damaged and will take some time to repair."

"You can go ahead and eat. It's not going to kill you." Samus directed her statement at Joanna as she resumed eating.

"Not hungry, thank you."

"You need to eat, Jo." Lara encouraged. "You're in no condition not to. Besides, it's very bad form to not eat when offered food when you're a stranger in a foreign culture."

Joanna looked uneasily at her meal.

"Will you relax?" Lara insisted. "I've been eating it and I'm not dead."

"Yet."

"Creto," Samus called. "If I wanted Joanna Dark dead, what would be my options?"

"Besides the numerous weapons and enhanced strength of your Chozo Suit?"

"Yes."

"You need only give a command and I would initiate one of one-hundred and thirty-seven security measures. Shall I list them?"

"Just their results."

"Ms. Dark would either be burned, frozen, skewered, crushed, sliced in two, blown up, incinerated, or, if we were in empty space, ejected into said empty space."

Samus looked at Jo.

"Eat your noodles."

Joanna stood up and walked to where the hatch stood overhead.

"I'd like to leave now."

Lara hurried after her as Samus grabbed Jo's plate and continued eating.

"Creto," Samus called. "Let Ms. Dark out."

"Jo, wait a second." Lara said, getting in front of the young agent as the platform lowered down.

"I don't care to stand here and be threatened by someone who doesn't even belong on this planet, thank you very much."

"You really expect to go out there with all those armed men who've already seen you with no cloak and a delicate wound on your side?"

"Wouldn't be the first time." Joanna stated as she moved past her.

"How do you expect to even get back out there when the switch is on the outside? 'Trapped with the blue lady forever' ring a bell?"

"I'll figure something out." Joanna replied coldly.

"Oh, that's no problem." Samus called, around her noodles. "Creto can blast her out."

Jo motioned a hand towards Samus in solution to Lara's questions.

"Not for another thirty-minutes at least, Samus." Creto announced.

Lara raised her arms. Joanna just shook her head and moved to stand on the platform.

"Fine, I'll wait outside."

"Come on, Jo." Lara pleaded. "An interstellar spaceship entombed in the ruins of a long dead civilization. This is the archeological find of a lifetime!"

"Your department, not mine." Joanna retorted. "Besides, I've already explained to you that between the skedar and the mayians, I've had quite enough of spaceships and aliens for a thousand lifetimes."

"Did you say the Skedar?" Samus called.

"Yes. What about it?" Joanna said, still anxious to get off the ship.

"And you're an archeologist?" Samus asked Lara.

Lara turned around, exasperated.

"Yes, but what does-"

"Creto." Samus called as she stood up and wiped her mouth with her towel. "Can you access my helm's memory banks?"

"Yes, I can, Samus." Creto answered.

"Pull it up and access index one, nine, five, five, eight." Samus instructed as she moved towards the control console. "You two may want to look at this."

The windshield suddenly became a viewer displaying an image of a weathered stone, upon which had been etched carvings of some unknown language. Samus turned back to Lara who was approaching with interest.

"Look familiar?" Samus asked her.

Lara looked at the figures.

"It…looks like Incan." Lara said. "But the symbols are slightly different."

"That was Creto's assessment as well. He searched his database and couldn't find any symbols matching these."

"I don't see what this has to do with me." Joanna called from the platform.

Samus turned to face her.

"This is an image of a stone tablet I found. It was discovered on an alien planet previously inhabited by the Skedar."

Lara looked up at Samus in surprise. Joanna stood pensive, rapping her fingers on her thigh. She knew what was coming next, and she hated it.

"Joanna," Samus stated. "Somehow, this writing found its way to an alien planet far into the future. Somehow, you and I have traveled backwards in time. And somehow, all three of us wound up in the same place at the same time. If what you tell me is true, there is a reason for the three of us coming together in this place. Something is happening that for some reason, involves all three of us. You may not like it, but this is too much of a coincidence for us to ignore. This ship may be your only way of discovering what is going on and your only way to get back home."

Joanna stood there, frustrated, rapping her fist on her thigh.

"Oh, bugger all. I know I'm going to regret this." She said as she stepped from the platform.