- An Unannounced Visitor at Lara's Home
Five Days Earlier...
'A monkey swing here, drop down and one final sprint', Lara Croft ran through in her mind, as at 9:30AM in the morning, she carried out her exercise routines. This session normally took up to about 30 minutes, and afterwards, Lara would do a few lengths of her swimming pool, doing a mixture of front crawl and breaststroke swimming strokes. However, today she was interrupted by a sudden announcement by Winston, her long serving faithful butler and good friend.
"LARA!" Winston called out, coming into the gym, and he came underneath the ladder pillar leading up to where the monkey bars were installed on the ceiling.
"Yes Winston" Lara responded, she held on midway through the bars, looking down and seeing Winston, with arms behind his back ready to say something important.
"You have a caller at the door, asking for you urgently. He said that it was a business proposition that you can't miss out on" Winston explained to Lara.
"Did he say what his name was, or is he anybody we know or heard of?" asked Lara.
"Nope, he just said that he wanted to meet you personally. I've told him to wait in the guest dining room for you" Winston told her.
"Okay Winston, thanks very much, keep an eye on him and I won't be long in the shower" said Lara.
Winston nodded in agreement with her, and left the gym. Lara safely dropped down from the monkey bars and made her way down. She rubbed off the sweat with her fitness towel, and went upstairs to her room. Going straight into her bathroom and turning her shower value to a quite hot setting. Questions ran though her thought process, as she proceeded in entering her shower area. 'Who could that visitor be?' and 'What would he want with me?'
Just before she had finished with the shower, Lara had thought of a possible answer to the reason of this stranger's visit. 'Maybe there is a special artefact that needs to be collected' she thought. Lara relished the possibility of going onto another adventure, the feeling of exploring and discovering long buried secrets and treasures is unbelievable. This thrilling hobby was indeed her undeniable passion, and most of the time, it rewarded her with an experience of a lifetime.
Lara had put on some casual clothes, and started her way down the stairs of her mansion into the guest meeting room, eager to meet up with the unexpected caller. She opened the door leading in, and there she had spotted him sitting on the arm chair, alongside with a midnight black briefcase, no doubt full of important paperwork. Further examining the guest, he wore a cream yellow full matching suit with a red tie, fitting in with his jet black hair and piercing frozen blue eyes. His hand soon swung out as he saw Lara entering the room.
"Ah Ms. Croft, sorry for the unannounced visit, but I could not wait any longer to get into contact with you!" The unknown guest began. Confused, Lara went over and shook his hand, wanting to ask one simple question.
"I'm sorry, but who are you?" Lara asked the smartly dressed stranger. He quickly clapped his hands.
"Tut! Where are my manners, my name is Martin Undergreen, and I'm here representing a very important client, who has a proposal for you." Martin had stated. He sat down opposite Lara, and brought out his briefcase onto the table.
"Who's this client, and what do they need me for?" Lara questioned Martin, surprised that the client hadn't come in person themselves.
"The client is someone who has been in the news headlines recently, you must have heard of Eric Copper Ms. Croft?"
"...Yes, now that name does ring a bell, do you mean the one who is the chairman of that successful corporation, which had a lot of bad press in the past?"
"Those were just pure made up journalism tales and rumours. Of course the Green Copper Industrial Corporation prides itself in being one of the most sustainable, environmentally and friendliest workplaces in the world. Thanks to the quickening growth of the business over the years, it has made Mr. Copper into one very rich man, and now he wants to spread his wealth through charity and philanthropy. He is if I do say so myself, one very remarkable man Ms. Croft." Continued Martin
"If you say so Martin, but what does he want with me? What is the main reason for your arrival?" asked a puzzled Lara.
"Ah, just getting onto that point Ms. Croft. You see our business goals have taken a bit of a different direction from before. At the moment, we still dig up raw materials like fossil fuels or metals, and then sell them on to companies all around the world, that's where our main profit figure comes from. But in recent years, Mr. Copper decided to create a new department in the company. Only this particular one was dedicated into researching unknown findings dug up from our sites. Some of these items were in a matter of days identified as rare minerals, but they weren't really anything special, until just last week where a new alien-like material was discovered." Martin clarified. He got some paper work, quickly shuffled through it looking for the page he wanted to show Lara. An annotated diagram came into view, and Martin handed the piece of paper over to Lara. She closely examined the photograph taken of the material, taking notice of all the written dialogue around the photo. For the first time in a while Lara was speechless of what she had been looking at.
"Fascinating...isn't it." Martin softly spoke, filling in the silence of the room.
"Indeed, it looks to be a very unique substance, but where on earth did you find this? Do you know of its origins or where it has come from?"
"We can only answer that if you are prepared to work for us. Our reliable sources have told us you're the right person to contact about this kind of new challenge."
"So you done your homework on me, what are you asking me to do?" replied Lara.
"Take a look at these pictures" Martin responded, handing over even more files from his briefcase to Lara. Lara scanned each one, each of the exhibit photographs showed quite grotesque pictures of victims been caught in ancient set-up traps. The area that they were in was a vast dark place, with not much to feature but the outline of an underground dug up tunnel. Lara thought no doubt that this area was the place where the unidentifiable material was found.
"As you can see and probably guessed Ms. Croft, these pictures show the site of where we found this material. However, our attempts to delve even deeper into the complex to find out what mysteries can be uncovered have all ended in the misery of failure. We need you Ms. Croft, with your expertise and experience in the field, to avoid these vicious traps that have killed off many of our loyal staff and close partners. Next you would explore and report what you find down there and bring back any samples that may be of some important significance. In return, we will reward you a once in a lifetime experience in coming part of the research team and you get to keep any artefacts you may come across! So how about it Ms. Croft, are you up to the challenge of uncovering one of Earth's hidden mysteries?"
Lara thought for a few seconds, until her answer came out quite promptly.
"Okay, I'm up for a bit of an adventuring, where am I headed for and what do you know so far about this unknown material?"
"We will be flying you out to India. This is where one of our sites in the jungle unearthed the breakthrough, and unfortunately where it led to the many mishaps, which we try to keep all hushed up. So far, our research team have only found out a tiny amount of data on the material. Apparently, it has a living cell structure, similar to those found on us human beings and plants. But from the sample, all the shapes of the cells are not identical to each other, so we will await further results from testing."
"Fair enough, so when is the date I set off then?" Lara inquired very excitedly.