Soraya clearly knows where she's going, which is making me a little suspicious. Except she's given me her gun, and both Soup Jesus (also known as Wound Stitching Jesus) and Reyes trust her. To be perfectly honest I don't distrust her entirely. There's something generally trustworthy about her. Maybe it's the way she spent the first thirty minutes in the car alternately complaining about Reyes and praising her and Roth. I didn't mind, because it keeps me from thinking about Lara too much. I wonder how she was able to focus when she worried about me.
Her and Reyes could have been me or Lara in twenty years if one or the other of us had rejected each other. The thought is painful. Watching our friendship fall apart over something like that would have been devastating. Time heals all wounds, but that doesn't mean things don't still sting sometimes, and Soraya seems to be a little sore about Reyes.
"You had to have been in London to get there that fast," I say. We're approaching the ocean, I'm pretty sure we're in Scotland now, or close to it.
"I was finishing up a job when Joslin called me. Turns out it's linked." She turns off the main road and drives us towards a sleepy looking town. It's the very definition of picturesque, so of course my camcorder makes it's way to my hands.
"What kind of job." I look at the world through a viewfinder and everything feels right again. This is my life. Maybe the best thing about Lara and me is how we've always supported each other in pursuing the things we love to do. I don't think I just follow her around, though I love watching her do what she loves. It's my career too. She just happens to be a great subject to document. I actually have this idea for a web documentary series on Youtube. I think it would work, and we can make people interested in the ancient world.
"Bodyguard." She glances at me and there's a slight leer on her face. "Some rich guy's daughter needed a protection detail. He's been pissing off the wrong people lately. She's a bit wild. You remind me of her." She just looks at me and I feel hot. I roll the window down and get the impression she likes messing with me. Well, it's working!
She points towards the coast coast. "There's a facility just outside of English waters. It's a corporation headed by a man named Shaw. Shaw and the Crofts go way back, and your description of the men that attacked you matched the description of some men that tried to mess with my socialite."
I put on a smirk. "I'm guessing that didn't stop you from messing with your socialite yourself, right?"
She laughs as we pull over. "Not in the slightest."
We both get out of the car. She's popping the trunk as I walk around to join her. There's a small arsenal inside. "How the hell did you get all that into the country?"
"I didn't. It was already here." She slid a shot gun over her shoulder then handed me some kind of small semi-auto rifle. "When you're both safe and sound, maybe I'll tell you some stories about Richard Croft, Nathaniel Shaw and Conrad Roth, and the very busy year we had in ninety-two."
"We definitely need to wait for Lara for that. She might literally kill us if she's not there to hear this." Okay so I've fired one of these a few times, I don't remember what kind of gun it is but I think I can use it. I have Roth's pistols too, tucked into my pants. I jump when she puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Let me handle most of this. Don't shoot unless you have to." She closed the trunk with a resounding thunk. "You're still innocent."
"I'm not going to let you just carry me. I'm going to pull my own weight." I brush her hand off of my shoulder as my stomach starts twisting around. "Lara needs me. Lets go."
I turn my back to her so I don't see the expression on her face, but she sounds amused when she says, "I'll explain my plan on the boat. We're going to sneak in. If we're lucky, we won't have to hurt anyone."
Her words lifts a weight off my back and my stomach stops tying itself into knots. I already can't sleep at night over Victor, I don't need to add a bunch of rent-a-goons to those nightmares too.
There's a little speedboat at the dock, and Soraya gets in and starts messing with the motor. She pulls on a black ski-mask, probably to obscure her hair. She has one for me, too, and I take it with a sigh. As we speed off towards the island, I realize that this woman has done this sort of thing before and I give her the eye. "So what's the plan?"
"Get inside, find your girl, trash anything of Shaw's that might hurt him, and get out."
"Yeah, that sounds really simple."
She laughs again and lounges against the motor, like we're on holiday and she's just soaking up the sun. Even though there's no sun and the storm has followed us north. "Just follow my lead, and don't make any noise."
"I'm not-"
She held up a finger. "You can watch my back. Can I trust you to do that?" A pause. "To defend, not stare."
I just give her a glare and she laughs again. She's not taking this seriously and it's really starting to piss me off. I change the subject. "What kind of company is this?"
"Research and Development. Weapons and medicine mostly. It's why Richard and Roth split with him. Richard was interested in pure science, and Roth...well Roth went anywhere Richard did. But Shaw wanted to use their discoveries for more practical uses." She points at me. "Could you imagine what a government could do if they thought they could control Himiko's power? We searched for Yamatai, you know, but never found it."
"Lucky you." I fold my arms. I can feel a tingling on my skin, and smell ozone, so I look to the sky to see if the storm has caught us. I don't really need to, the way the boat is bouncing on the waves is evidence enough. While the other woman is distracted by keeping us afloat, I pull up the sleeve of my shirt. The paint is back. I tug the sleeve back down and start to hyperventilate.
This isn't good. It's supposed to be paint, not permanent markings. I flash back to picking up the red skull, and the feeling it had given me. And to the nightmare I'd had with the doors. I swallow. I swear I hear laughing in the back of my head, and it's not the first time I heard laughing. But Lara had heard something in Costa Rica too, hadn't she? I'm losing my mind!
Soraya snaps her fingers in front of my face. "Focus. If you lose it here you'll lose it in there and then we're both fucked. I'll leave you both in there if I have to."
She must think I'm freaking out about the impending gun violence. I'm not, really. Not as much as I should be, but what would she say if I tell her I think some portion of Himiko had gotten inside me and somehow woke up? "I'll be okay. I'm okay. I promise."
She beaches the boat, and then I help her drag it out of reach of the water. We're going to need that to get back. It'd be a long swim otherwise, and impossible in this weather. I try to think calm thoughts and non-choppy seas. The wind lessens a little bit, and so does the rain. That has to be a coincidence. Please let it be a coincidence.
It's a long hike until we can find a way off the beach and into the facility proper. It's pretty big, with barbwire fences and probably other defenses we can't see. That doesn't stop Soraya from cutting through one and letting us inside.
Our first sign something is wrong is how easily we get into the building itself. There's shouting in the distance and I hear gunfire. I grab Soraya's arm. "That's Lara! It has to be!"
"How rude," She says. "Rescuing herself." I can hear the grin in her voice, and I flick the safety on my gun off. I don't have to use it, not yet. We have the advantage of surprise and she uses it well, clubbing the first man we find in the back of the head. I smash someone's nose as we're discovered and a scuffle breaks out. Soraya is efficient, but not brutal. She incapacitates rather than kills, though I'm sure a couple of those men will bleed out. We don't fire a shot until we're moving down the stairs, and then she fires three and I just...kind of spray in a panic.
"Congratulations, you hit a wall." She pats me on the shoulder condescendingly and then leads me the rest of the way down. We check rooms as we go, and find one with what looks like Lara's jacket. There are three bodies. One had his forehead smashed in, but the other two were hit from behind. I feel sick.
Soraya looks through a toolbox. "They tortured her." She points at a bloodied chair. "Come on, she has a head start on us."
"She won't hold back," I warn the mercenary, grabbing Lara's jacket. "When she gets like this, it's her or them and she's not going to play nice." I pull Lara's jade pendant out of my pocket and squeeze my hand around it. I'd had it since last night. She rarely takes it off, but she had because it hadn't gone with her outfit and she knew I'd tease her for it.
Now, maybe it'll be the only thing that snaps her back to the present. Snaps her back to me. Maybe I'm going to get us killed, but I know my way around a gun. I catch the way Soraya looks at the bodies. I know what she's thinking. It's so, so brutal. But that's Lara when she's cornered.
"I don't play nice either," Soraya points out as she reloads a clip. "But I hope she recognizes you when it counts."
"She'll still be her," I say, when we find a corridor filled with bodies and bullets. "She has to be."