Standing in the midst of what had once been a rather pleasant-looking dining room, Lara Croft folded her arms across her chest and frowned. Everywhere she looked, there were bits and pieces of odd-sized metal strewn about, covering the floor, the furniture, the glass tables Zip had arranged his countless monitors on… even the gods-damned windowsills hadn't escaped whatever wild idea had sprung into his deranged head, regardless of the many empty shelves lining the far side of the room. There was hardly enough space left to stand among the clutter, let alone walk; and though she would usually make a point of disregarding his eccentrics entirely, she couldn't help but bristle at the sight before her.
A sea of shimmering, gleaming metal, and a madman cowering before it. Wonderful.
"Is there any greater meaning behind this, or did you just feel like staring at a bunch of scraps for hours on end?" Her voice was colder than she'd intended it to be, though she didn't bother reprimanding herself for it. Odds were he wouldn't even notice, and if he did— well, she couldn't exactly bring herself to care. "Karel's still out there, and he certainly won't stop to play with garbage."
His eyes darted toward her for an instant, the annoyance in them barely concealed. "What? You think I'm wasting your precious time?"
"I do, yes," she replied, lifting her chin just the slightest bit before gesturing toward the mess spread out in front of him. "Very much so, in fact — or does any of this have to do with the Cabal?"
The sidelong look Zip offered her in turn was nothing short of mocking. "All of it," he proclaimed, scrambling to his feet and reaching for one of the folders she'd given him days before; the mad delight in his eyes only seeming to swell with every single breath he took. "See, you mentioned this… thing, right? That, uh, So–… Cyp…"
"Sanglyph."
"Yes, that." He paused momentarily, almost as though he were reconsidering his findings, before breaking out into a bright, near psychotic grin. "Well, I took a look at your notebook, okay? And… that thing, what it did— that was totally weird, right?"
It was an effort to keep her arms folded across her chest — to keep her fists tucked close to her body and her expression blank. "Could you be any more specific?"
"The glowing? The explosion? Anyway, see, I thought it was weird. And that sword you brought back from India, it's been just as much of a pain in the ass these last few days, so… I checked it out."
Taking a deep, steadying breath to try and suppress the anger already simmering in her gut, Lara raised her chin and shrugged her shoulders; motioning for him to go on rather than chastising him for wasting even more time on mere trifles. He'd hardly ever disappointed her, after all – at least not enough to fully justify her lingering mistrust, regardless of how little she cared for his odd mannerisms or the mess he evidently loved being surrounded by.
"As it turns out, the thing's made of a whole bunch of materials," he muttered, turning to point toward the first two rows of scraps as he spoke. "Copper, gold, steel, flecks of obsidian… and two other metals I couldn't figure out. Probably something… out of this world."
"The Nephili were part angelic, not aliens, Zip. Save the conspiracy theories for a more appropriate time."
Despite her cool tone, a hesitant smile tugged at her lips. So he'd found something — something they might find use for in the future, minor as it might have been. Not that they could truly disregard any kind of new information at this point, anyway.
Shifting in her stance, Lara loosed a soft breath and sucked on her teeth; hesitating, almost, as she let her gaze drift from her friend to the pile of metal scraps to his feet. She didn't want to know where he'd acquired them or how he'd managed to get into the cellar without alerting her to his presence — not for about a dozen different, equally unpleasant reasons. And, loath as she was to admit it, to save herself from a major migraine.
"So — it's a fancy sword." Brows furrowed and her eyes gleaming with the first hints of exhaustion, Lara shook her head. "How is this going to help us, exactly?"
He smiled then; a wicked, vengeance-driven sort of smile she'd only ever seen him wear once before, back when she'd first told him about what she'd been dragged into during her stay in Paris. Back when she'd still struggled to breathe, to see, to live, knowing she'd been nothing more than a self-important pawn in a game she had never really intended to play, a game she'd been tossed into against her own will. A game that, despite her pride, she wasn't likely to win.
Zip's expression turned solemn in a heartbeat; whether because of something he'd seen in her face or her question, she couldn't quite tell. "Not at all, for now," he murmured, only to pluck a particularly deformed piece of metal from one of the small heaps on the floor. "I'm still trying to figure out what the other two components are, and if they play some part in… whatever it is they ought to do."
"Kurtis might be able to help you with that," Lara agreed. "It's his heirloom, after all."
One he wasn't at all comfortable with discussing, no matter how much she prodded him for answers; almost as if the sheer mention of it was too much weight to bear, a memory too upsetting to recall. She hadn't pushed the issue either, figuring that a gods-damned sword, regardless of its make, would hardly be enough to push Karel back — especially if he'd managed to return to the arena and retrieve the Sanglyph after the initial explosion.
Which, at this point, was less of a question and more of a certainty, considering the way he'd gloated as he'd hovered above her in that cell; his face gaunt and raw, blistered, even, as though his flesh had been torn right off his cheeks to reveal the blackened bone beneath. I decide. Whether you live or die, I decide.
The memory of his voice in her ear was enough to make the bile rise in her stomach, thick and bitter like the tonic he'd forced down her throat that same night. And if you're truly as smart as you consider yourself to be, you'll choose the right side. My side. My queen.
"…–Lara?" Zip's voice broke through her memories like a tidal wave, leaving her confused and slightly disoriented as she pulled herself out of the fog that had clogged her mind. Fine — she was fine, unharmed, and absolutely, completely safe. For now, at least. "Are you alright?"
She forced another deep breath into her lungs before she spoke, the words like gravel against her sore throat. "I'm tired, Zip. What did you say?"
"…right," he huffed, pursing his lips in thinly veiled skepticism as his eyes roamed across her face, searching for answers where even she had none. "I said that he'd be an idiot to tell us anything about that thing. It's clearly important to him, otherwise he wouldn't have sent you to find it — but he didn't tell you where it was, why his parents hid it in India of all places,… why his father looks like he just kicked the bucket."
A good point, though one she'd keep tucked into a corner of her mind for now. "Well, as of right now, we're holding his sword hostage. Either he answers my questions or he'll never get his hands on it again, heirloom or no." She paused then, unfolding her arms as she watched the small piece of metal shimmer in Zip's grasp. "Where did you find the obsidian?"
"The hilt, mostly."
Interesting. "So, we have a Lux Veritatis blade, hidden in a Vedic burial chamber, engraved in Latin, possibly addressed to the man I found in the tomb… and a hilt decorated with the same kind of obsidian the ancient Greeks used for weaponry during the Neolithic Age, as well as… what was it? Copper?"
"Yep," he nodded, gesturing toward the mess behind him. "Gold and emerald, too."
If that was true, the sword would not only be impossible to date, it would have also been worth a fortune — and, more importantly, wouldn't have been the kind of weapon one would carry into battle. Not unless slashing through flesh and bone hadn't been its primary purpose.
Heaving a disgruntled sigh, Lara shook her head and braced her hands against her hips. "What about the file I gave you?"
"Dead end," he mumbled, dropping into the chair behind his desk and nudging a few containers of what looked like Chinese takeout to the side. "Interpol blew up the Strahov shortly after Karel abducted you, and the only trace he left behind is… well, you. And you ain't tellin' us nothin'."
There was something in the way he looked at her then, the way his eyes darted from her knitted brows to the fingers digging into her own waist, that almost made her bristle. It wasn't often that Zip bothered to worry about her, even less now that she was unharmed and fully capable of tearing him to bloody ribbons for it — but whenever he did, whenever he looked at her the way he did now… it tugged something loose deep inside of her chest, something so vile and piercing, she'd much rather keep it locked up.
Pointedly ignoring his gaze, Lara gave Zip a sharp nod. "Try other databases. He'll be somewhere in Europe; probably the Ukraine or Greece." A pause. "He wants me to find him, so he won't keep a low profile either."
"What do you you mean he wants—…why do you even want to find him?" The disapproval and blatant disbelief in his voice wasn't lost on her, though she kindly ignored it. "To have him mush your brain a bit more? And even if—… why would you walk right into his trap? Last time he got his hands on your miserable ass, you spent two months confined to a hospital bed!"
"I'm well aware of that," she snapped, waiting for him to turn his attention back to his monitor before loosening her jaws and inclining her chin toward the mess he'd made. "But this — however helpful it might be, we need to know where the Cabal are first. What they might be planning, who they are conferring with, whether they've found another Sleeper…"
A weak explanation for something she couldn't possibly put into words — and yet the only one that made sense. Karel would never, not in a million lifetimes, allow her to return to the life she'd known before; not as long as he remained as infatuated with her as he had been in Prague, and most certainly not until he'd managed to break through whatever mental barriers she'd shut him out of her head with. He probably saw her as a challenge more than an opponent at this point, anyway.
Not that his perception of her —of them— mattered.
Bending to pick up a shard of emerald, Lara pursed her lips and huffed through her nose. "There's nothing to worry about, in any case," she murmured, turning the piece around in her hand. "He needs me alive, and unless he killed all of his men since we last met, I won't have any trouble identifying them."
"That's not the issue." His eyes flickered toward her for a moment, narrowing slightly at the gem between her fingers. "Do you have any reason to trust Kurtis? Even if he truly were who he says he is —which, by the way, he is not— the guy's a bloody maniac. Whether you live or die won't matter to him, not unless you take his stupid revenge with you."
"What do you mean?"
He hesitated for a moment, only to push his keyboard away and heave a rather theatrical sigh. "You already know Trent isn't his real name — but did you know he's a mercenary? And a foreign legion bastard, at that."
She hadn't known. And though she tried her best to make herself believe it didn't matter…
"I thought their servers were impenetrable." And rigged with thousands upon thousands of safety mechanisms, all destined to target whoever had the audacity, the hubris to attempt hacking them — although she'd never heard of anyone attempting it, either.
A soft smirk tugged on the edges of her friend's mouth as he huffed and leaned back in his chair, both arms crossed behind his head. "Nothin's impossible, girl. Or impenetrable."
"You need a lawyer, then," she shot, her nails digging deeper into her skin. Yet another ridiculous waste of time that she would have to deal with; another favor she'd have to call in for something so trivial, so unimportant—… "Or a baker's dozen, considering."
He merely shook his head. "Got this one covered. Either way, there was a lo—…"
"If there's anything I need to know, or feel he should tell me about, I will ask him myself." Shifting to pocket the gem she'd been clutching for the past few minutes, Lara gritted her teeth and straightened her back; her patience finally wavering as she braced her hands against the glass table and leaned forward. "Either way, I don't see the importance of his… past occupations, seeing as he's not a threat."
The answering scowl on his face told her enough about what he thought that she couldn't entirely suppress the renewed anger and impatience blossoming in her eyes. If this was any indication of how he'd treat Kurtis once he'd arrive, she definitely wouldn't be able to protect him — or find herself willing to, for that matter.
"Maybe not to you — maybe not right now," Zip scoffed, carefully avoiding to meet her glower as he turned his attention back to whatever it was he'd been staring at before; a single muscle feathering in his jaw as though he, too, had to douse the adrenaline in his veins. "But judging by his file, he's the last person I'd ever trust."
Gods, if she had to listen to his mindless rambling for another minute… "Cut it out, Zip, or I'm going to have to remind you what my file looks like."
He didn't bother looking up again for a good minute, seemingly calming whatever kind of fire was burning in his gut before, finally, leaning back in his chair; both hands folded in his lap while his eyes remained glued to the screen in front of him. Pouting.
For heaven's sake.
"There you go," he snapped eventually, inclining his chin toward the monitor. "These are all the hits I got — everything else, well, you'll have to check out yourself."
While she refrained from reminding him that, despite his own, deranged beliefs, she still signed his pay checks every month, Lara couldn't help but roll her eyes at the slight offense lingering in his voice. "Enlarge the one on the bottom right, please."
Though the image was foggy, there was no doubt about who was staring into the camera — or what he was holding in his hands. In fact, Karel really hadn't changed much from when she'd last seen him; his cheeks had barely even begun filling up yet, his nose had remained slightly crooked and his bones were still peeking out of the torn, burnt flesh here and there, almost as if his body were fighting against the healing process.
Or, she mused, he was simply trying to mess with her head again.
"Where was this taken?"
"Kiev." Zip's voice sounded raw now, laced with what she could only assume was restrained anger and, knowing him, hints of paranoia. "Outskirts of the city, near some old industrial area. I didn't even know they used these kind of security cameras there."
Nodding her agreement, Lara frowned and leaned back. "They don't, actually."
Or at least, that had been her impression when she'd last been there — not that she couldn't have overlooked them then, or simply considered them meaningless. It wasn't often that she found herself in any sort of urban area, in any event, and even when she did, well… her focus usually lay in something more important than hidden cameras.
Burying her hands in the pockets of her jeans, Lara gnawed on her bottom lip and knitted her brows. There was something horribly, utterly wrong with this picture; something minor, perhaps, a detail that didn't fit into the larger context. The way he held himself was certainly reminiscent of the man she'd come to loathe, and the wounds he wore, the way the torn flesh drooped down the side of his face like molten wax, couldn't have been staged — but there was something else too, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Something much more frightening than the smirk tugging on his lips.
"Judging by the timestamp on the videos, these were all… taken at the exact same time," Zip tried, turning the monitor —now plastered with a myriad of different images— to properly face her. "Bangkok, Paris, London,… No matter how much of a blockbuster-movie-villain that guy is, I have trouble believing he'd be able to pull that off."
There was a roaring in her ears now; a loud, rumbling noise that reminded her of the night Von Croy had been murdered — the night her life had fallen to pieces. "Turn it off," she said, her hands shivering as she stumbled backward and reflexively reached for the pendant around her neck, warm and soothing against her clammy skin. "Turn. it. off."
Perhaps a part of her knew that it was too late. Perhaps she should have known before.
But even despite that, despite herself, she couldn't help but press the balls of her thumbs to her temples when the screen turned to black and the roaring increased, deafening her, blinding her, clawing at her brain.
Tugging her down, down, down…
And the voice — that voice she'd prayed she'd never hear again.
"Hello, Lara."
Well, there's not much left to say for me, except for: I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Lots of love, Yelena
