A special thanks to TimidAntelope, who provided beta for this chapter! If you haven't read her work, I strongly suggest you drop everything you're doing (including reading this) and go check it out!

"So far we've been to three cities not including Lisbon." Solange was leaning on the rail of the boat beside Cassie and Ian, the latter of whom was casually peeling a tangerine. "We've trashed a beach, crashed a private party, been chased by police, apparently assaulted someone who took a picture of us, stole a boat and blew it up-"

"We littered," Ian noted dryly, tossing his peel into the ocean. "That one happened just now."

"What else could we possibly do to wreak havoc on the way to Tollan?" Solange lamented, and cradled her head in her hands.

Cassie side-eyed her. She wasn't quite sure why Solange was so worked up, but she still generally seemed just a little off to Cassie. Almost like she quietly resented the fact they were helping her. "If you can get bad-attitude Hello Kitty to call off his men," Cassie said, a bit snidely, "feel free."

Ian popped the last section of tangerine into his mouth and licked his thumb clean. "That'd be something, wouldn't it? An adventure where we aren't getting shot at."

The three young people stood in silence gazing out at the sea- an endless grey field gleaming dully as the evening deepened into night. Solange, with a mood that suggested she was competing with the dusk for who could be darker, leaned on the rail with a dramatic "Humph!" Her sour mood was quickly whittling away at Cassie's nerves, and it was only a matter of a couple minutes before Cassie stood and announced, "I'm going to get some sleep". Turning brusquely on her heel, she walked away and ducked through the hatch to the lower deck, shutting the door a little harder than necessary behind her.

The problem with boats, Cassie quickly realized, was that there was no getting away from whoever you were on board with. That, and twenty hours was a lot of time to pass without addressing the awkward tension between her and Solange- even if Cassie did spend a whole nine of those hours in her bed catching up on sleep. The old guitar she found stashed inside a closet in one of the cabins helped too, but eventually the frostiness between her and the Cortes girl drove Cassie to the best place she could think of to get advice.

"You're blowing this way out of proportion, darling," Cutter said sagely, and gave the wheel a spin to keep the boat on course. "What she did was lie to us about who she was and what her stakes were in this. That's the kind of thing that happens every other day in this business, luv, and you know that." He scoffed and threw up his hand. "I mean just think about what happened with Ian on that Avalon job. He wasn't exactly the picture of transparency."

Cassie chewed her lip and swiveled back and forth in the copilot's chair as she considered her response. "Yeah, but that didn't really affect anyone except maybe me, and I can live with that," she said. Somewhere during the conversation, she had decided that watching the little boat that represented them on the digital chart was immensely fascinating, and she kept her eyes glued to that over all else. "This- this is different. It put you in danger. It put Ian in danger. I mean, just think if Foss hadn't decided to call me! We wouldn't have gotten you involved, and then he would have been facing all this alone and probably died somewhere in…" Cassie realized how worked up she was getting and trailed off. She could feel Cutter's eyes on her and briefly broke her staring contest with the screen to look over at him. "I… I care about him, Charlie. A lot." She could feel her cheeks heating up, and added quickly, "Just don't tell him I said that."

Cutter mimed zipping his lips closed. "Your secret is safe with me."

The pilot house was silent for a few minutes, save for the swishing of the hydraulics whenever Cutter turned the wheel and the occasional thud from a piece of tackle banging against the wall as the boat swayed. "Going back to the issue of Miss Cortes, for a minute," Cutter said, his gruff voice tempered with a softness that Cassie was beginning to recognize was an almost fatherly affection for her. "I wasn't there for your Old Man's Shambala adventure. But I'm very close to someone who was. Chloe used to talk about it sometimes. And sometimes when she was feeling philosophical- or when she had a few drinks in her, which was normally the only time she got philosophical- she would talk about the moment that changed everything. Not just with the Shambala business, but that changed everyone involved." Cassie looked inquiringly at him, so Cutter continued, "It was- you know, according to her, at least- when your mum tried to save Harry Flynn. He had put everyone in danger, not the least of which was the man she loved, but for some reason your mother still tried to save him- and it nearly cost her her life. Chloe said she'd never seen anything like it before, and that if it wasn't for your mum we probably would all have turned into violent psychopaths, killing anyone who got in the way of making a buck." He gave a snort of laughter. "As far as I can tell, she's probably right."

Cassie looked at him confused, so he added, "The point is, you're Nathan Drake's daughter. But you're also Elena Fisher's daughter. You can find your way through history just as well as you can a fistfight, but also you've got a lot of compassion, and a heart that won't give up on people." Cutter looked pointedly at Cassie. "Don't lose that. Solange has been through a lot, and she just wants to finish what her father started- just like your old man wanted to finish what his mother started. Got it?"

Cassie nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I got it." She smiled. "Thanks, Charlie."

"Don't mention it," Cutter said. "Now go get suited up in your dive gear. We should be there in a half hour or so."

Cassie stood and left the pilot house to change. Cutter glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was alone, then muttered under his breath, "God, I hope my advice doesn't get her bloody killed. I'm not sure Elena would stop at punching me this time…"

The door crashed open behind him again, and he turned to see Cassie looking very embarrassed. "Oi- what happened to you?" Cutter asked in confusion.

"I grabbed a wet suit and went to change in one of the bathrooms," she said.

"And?"

"And Ian was already in it, changing into his."

Cutter's eyes went wide, and he nodded slowly. "Well," he smacked his lips thoughtfully. "I'm sure that must be a traumatizing experience. I think I saw some bleach below decks. You could pour some in your eyes, and-"

Cassie laughed along with him, looking grateful for his humor easing the moment. "Thanks. I'll just go change in my room and try not to die of embarrassment."

Squatted down on the back deck, Ian gave a tug on the webbing of his BCD to tighten the straps around his dive tank and squinted into the sun. As he scanned the empty horizon, his lips quirked into a frown. If Solange's map was to be trusted, the wreck of De Figueroa's ship was almost directly beneath them, about a hundred and fifty feet below the glittering surface of the Caribbean Sea.

"Playing with your equipment, Foster?" Cutter's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. The Englishman sauntered casually up to him with a steaming mug of tea in one hand, and the other hand buried in his jacket pocket.

Ian chuckled as he stood and dusted his hands together. "You know, you could come with us and leave Solange to watch the boat. Except of course, you're scared of the water.

"I'm not 'scared' of the water," Cutter said defensively and scoffed as if the very notion was preposterous. Ian raised an eyebrow and held out his diving mask toward him. "Ok, I'm a little claustrophobic and don't like getting wet," Cutter relented. "It's completely different than being scared. Besides, this is your chance to impress Cass while you strut around in skin-tight rubber."

Ian rolled his eyes but played along with the joke, spreading his arms as if on display. "How do I look?"

Just then the cabin door swung open behind them, and Cassie Drake stepped out on deck in her diving suit. As a direct result, Ian's train of thought immediately and completely derailed. Cassie's scuba suit hugged the contours of her body in ways her usual, more conservative style of dress didn't, and Ian immediately decided that it was a change he would not be complaining about. Almost without thinking, his eyes started at her chest and worked their way down, his mouth felt suddenly dry, and he ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek as his gaze finally made it back up to Cassie's face.

Cutter saw him staring and backhanded him in the chest as the youngest Drake approached. "Reign it in, Romeo," Cutter grumbled under his breath. Ian shook his head and cleared his throat.

Cassie, for her part, had failed to notice her partner's not-so-subtle gawking as she fiddled with her dive watch. As she passed, she mumbled to the two men while still intently looking at her wrist, "Any sign of company, Charlie?"

Still glaring at Ian, Cutter answered, "Nothing yet. The Cortes girl and I will keep an eye out and let you know if anything comes up."

"Great!" Cassie chirped, finishing with her watch and bending over to strap a knife to her calf. Unbeknownst to her, the action got another wide-eyed glance from Ian as he did his best to look anywhere but at her backside. His efforts at avoidance, however, caused him to meet Cutter's eyes again, and he grinned sheepishly when he realized the Englishman's gaze was still shooting daggers into him. Cassie secured the knife and stood, turning back to her companions. When she saw the looks on their faces, she frowned. "Everything OK?" she asked, oblivious to the tension.

Cutter made a show of brightening up as he put an arm around Ian's shoulder. "Swell," he drawled, giving an over-the-top smile to Cassie. "Ian just can't wait to get in the water, that's all. He's feeling a little… warm right now."

Ian shrugged off Cutter's arm and thanked his lucky stars that Cassie was in that zone she got in where she was too focused on the job to notice much of anything else. Giving an affirmative reply when Cassie asked if he was ready, Ian hoisted his gear and slipped his arms into the straps, and then sat down on the transom next to her. They each clipped on a couple of lifting bags, wriggled their feet into some flippers, and looked back at the sound of the cabin door opening again.

Dressed in a billowy white shirt and matching pants, Solange stepped out from the cabin and strode down the deck, hands clasped behind her back. She had on dark glasses which helped hide her expression, but it seemed to Cassie that Solange's gaze was wistful, and almost a little sad, as she stared out at the water. "If I knew how to dive," the girl sighed, "I would be going with you to retrieve the mirror."

Cassie's eyes flicked over to Cutter as she remembered their earlier conversation, and she mustered an understanding smile as she replied, "I'm sure your father would understand. He'd still be proud of you for making it this far." Cassie found herself surprised that she meant it.

Solange nodded stiffly and looked away. "Just be careful," she said. Then, so quietly Cassie almost didn't hear her over the sound of the ocean, "Thank you."

"We'll do our best!" Cassie said brightly.

Cutter turned to walk back to the pilot house where he would keep an eye out for possible threats. "You kids stay in touch now," he called back, taking a swig from his mug as he walked. "I'll watch things topside, but make sure you stay out of trouble down below, too." He shot a particularly pointed glance at Ian.

Cassie and Ian's eyes briefly met with a sparkle of mischievousness. "Yes, dad…" Cassie smiled teasingly, then they pulled on their face masks and slipped off into the water.

It was dazzling, the way the dreamy warmth and vibrant clarity of the surface waters gradually gave way to cooler temperatures and richer, more heavily saturated hues as Cassie continued her descent with Ian keeping close pace beside her. Diving was one of Cassie's passions, and even the peculiar circumstances of the trip didn't stop her from watching the environment around her with wide-eyed wonder as they dove ever deeper, her face eager and bright behind her mask. As they reached a wide shelf and leveled out to follow it, she spotted a shy reef octopus gliding quickly away from them. She grabbed Ian's arm and pointed as the creature disappeared in a cloud of ink. "Did you see that?" she gushed. "Octopuses are so cool!"

"Ugh, tentacles…" Cutter's voice came over the comms, and the scratchiness of the sound felt starkly out of place in the vast, booming void that surrounded them. "Not exactly my idea of a good time."

"Whoa now! I never said tentacles were my idea of 'a good time'," Cassie immediately objected.

"Yeah, let's not make this weird now…" Ian added.

But Cutter either didn't notice or was ignoring them. "Eight of those things to wrap you up in, AND it's underwater? Talk about a bloody nightmare."

Ian chuckled. "You know, not everyone is as claustrophobic as you."

"Rub it in, mate." Cutter droned. "But what do you say we have this conversation again after you've swam under a pool of fire while carrying an unconscious person?"

"Still beating that dead horse?"

"Don't make me pull anchor and leave you," Cutter warned.

As they neared the edge of the rock shelf, Cassie started to feel a little woozy and paused, taking a moment to try to clear her head and adjust to the depths that they were reaching. "You okay?" Ian asked her as he hovered in the water beside her.

She nodded. "Yeah. Just give me a minute here." She kicked her feet and ascended a few yards, and did some lazy summersaults as she waited for the symptoms to pass. "Alright," she said after a few minutes. "Let's keep going."

Cassie and Ian slipped over the edge of the shelf and continued toward the ocean floor, flicking on their diving lights as the water continued to darken. While they were passing over a colony of brain coral, Solange's voice crackled through their diving masks. "Do you see the shipwreck yet?"

"Not yet," Cassie reported as she twisted in a tight spiral between two rocks, more for the fun of it than anything.

"Oi- want to hear a joke?" Cutter asked. "Since we're waiting," he added, as if it was the natural thing to do.

"Oh god, here we go," Ian drawled sarcastically.

"So this fish has a car, right?" Cutter said, choosing to ignore Ian's comment. "And it's broken down. So he takes it to the shop and asks if they can fix it."

"Uh-huh," Cassie said, a smile creeping over her face.

"And the mechanic says, 'Looks like you blew a seal!' And the fish goes, 'Well then fix it- and keep my bloody personal life out of it!'." Cutter laughed at his own joke.

Were it not for the diving mask she was wearing, Cassie would have facepalmed. Still, she couldn't help giggling a little bit as she kept swimming toward the sea floor. "You're a real riot, Charlie," she said.

A dark, looming mass began to take shape in the murky distance. Cassie strained to make it out, but it was still near the limits of their field of vision. "Hey, you see that?" she heard Ian say through the comms.

Cassie nodded. "Guys, we may have found something. Hard to say right now- visibility is at about twenty feet, give or take." She gave a strong kick, propelling herself forward through the water. "We'll check it out and let you know."

"Right. You kids be careful. Keep your eyes peeled for sharks. Or tentacles."

"Will do, Charlie."

As the two of them drew closer to the object its shape grew clearer, and at ten yards it was unmistakable. An old, broken ship lay tipped on one side, its masts broken off into stubs, its timeworn planks encrusted with barnacles and coral. The glow of Cassie and Ian's lights filtering through the currents cast ripples of dancing indigo and deep gray across worm-eaten boards and gaping portlights. Through gaps in the hull, schools of fish darted out and disappeared. In awe, Cassie swam up and gently placed a hand on the broken spine of the ship where it lay half-buried in the silt, then with Ian by her side she ghosted upwards along the ponderous shell of what had once been a proud Spanish vessel.

"Charlie!" Ian called through the comms. "We've got a boat!"

"Well now, it's our lucky day- us too!" Cutter replied with fake cheeriness.

Behind her mask, Cassie's eyes widened. She stopped at the edge of the ship's deck, her hands gripping the rail. "What?" she asked with concern.

Cutter's raspy drawl drifted back. "Something just showed up on the horizon. Can't see much of them yet, and they haven't started shooting, so it's hard to say who it is." He paused, then added, "May want to get cracking though. Just in case they aren't here for the shrimping."

Cassie chewed the inside of her lip thoughtfully and looked around. "Alright," she said, pushing off the rail and gliding over to stand on the inclined side of the mast stump. "If the mirror is here, De Figueroa would have kept it close to him, in the captain's quarters. And the captain's quarters were always-"

"-at the back of the boat," Ian finished, and they both turned to the cabin at the stern.

The two of them swam up the stairs to the quarterdeck, passing the ship's wheel on the way, and stopped by the door to the aft cabins. "Hey, Ian," Cassie said, "Give me a hand with this?"

Whatever handle had once been on the door had long since rusted off, so they dug their fingers into the crack along the edge and pulled. "It's stuck!" Ian sighed in frustration. "Covered in so many barnacles it's like somebody cemented it shut!"

"Let's try again!" Cassie said urgently. "On three! One, two, three!"

They both braced their feet against the wall of the deckhouse and once again used their fingertips to pry out on the edge of the door. This time, the wood began to crack and groan under the strain, until finally it broke loose from the concrete-like barnacles that had sealed it shut. Swinging open in slow motion from the water drag, the door fell against the wall of the cabin with a bassy thud that resonated dully through the depths. Then the rust-corroded iron hinges snapped and the door forward, striking one corner on the deck and then bouncing off and drifting slowly to the ocean floor. "Alright," Cassie announced as she watched a cloud of silt kick up where the door landed. "We're in!"

Once inside, Cassie swept her light around the room, scaring a flurry of small fish that scattered as the beam of light cut through the gloom and pooled on the wall opposite them. The interior of the wreck was even gloomier than the outside, but as Cassie's eyes adjusted to it she could make out a skull caught in the field of illumination. The skeleton to which the skull belonged was collapsed in the corner created by an armoire that had been bolted to the wall on the other side of a navigation desk, which was in the center of the cabin, also bolted down. The armoire was long since rotting away and worm eaten, and half had collapsed into a pile that lay at the low end of the inclined cabin, leaving a kind of inverted "L" shape on the wall for the skeleton to rest against.

"Creepy." Cassie said as she played the light over the bones. "And so cool!"

"Definitely looks like sixteenth-century Spanish," Ian noted, and pointed to the few scraps of clothing that still clung to the bones. He swam over to it and gently lifted something from behind the skeleton, then held it up for Cassie to see. "Check it out- a matchlock rifle."

Cassie frowned and treaded water as she studied the archaic firearm. "Do you think they got attacked, and that's why they sank?" she asked.

"Maybe," Ian said. He put the gun back and pushed off the side of the armoire, gliding to the uphill side of the cabin. "If so, let's hope whoever attacked them didn't find the mirror."

It was a haunting thought, but Cassie didn't have much time to consider it as Cutter's voice crackled through her diving mask. "Oi- I've got good news."

A familiar, staccato sound in the background made Cassie stop and quirk her head to one side. "Is that… gunfire?"

"Spot on. Wow, you've really… really got some good hearing, Cass," Cutter replied. "As such, we now positively, absolutely know who's on the other boat. Hint: they're not here for the shrimp." There was a pause and the sound of more gunfire. "If it's alright with you two, I think I'll start pulling the anchor."

"Right, yeah. Get ready to make a break for it. Ian and I will find the mirror and get back to you." Cassie said.

"Just try to get a bloody move on before Tristan's lads turn our boat into a sieve, eh?"

"Roger that," Cassie replied. She and Ian launched into a desperate search of the captain's quarters, checking each pile of detritus and every piece of furniture that was still standing. Cassie started with the desk, ripping open one drawer after the next, but only found the rotting and waterlogged remains of charts and writing implements. As she pulled the final drawer completely out of the desk and tossed it aside in frustration, her eyes fell on a knife that was lodged in the edge of the desk's wooden top, nearly in the center of the long side. Her first thought was that it had likely ended up there during a skirmish, but as she looked more closely she realized that it looked to be stuck in between the edges of two layers of wood- like the desk top had been laminated and the knife had been inserted in the joint. On a hunch, she planted her feet on the deck, grabbed the handle of the knife, and pulled up on it.

Three things happened simultaneously. The knife blade snapped off, while a roughly eighteen-inch square section of the desk's surface flipped up to reveal a hidden compartment, and the deck under Cassie's feet cracked and sunk down at an even steeper angle then the rest. "Whoa!" Cassie cried out, paddling her arms to swim back up to the desk as the boards that had broken drifted down into the lower decks. Grabbing the edge of the navigation desk with one hand and holding her flashlight with the other, she looked to see what her work had uncovered.

Inside the compartment was a small bag, the leather rotting and all but disintegrated to the point where it clearly showed the outline of a flat, round object about a foot in diameter. Her throat tightened and her breath hitched as she peeled back the crumbling material to expose what was inside it.

It was breath taking- a flawlessly crafted circle of obsidian, its surface finely polished and the edges carefully shaped and smoothed until there was not a hint of imperfection. For something made, at the very latest, in the early sixteenth century, the Smoking Mirror would not look out of place displayed alongside the work of modern jewelers or artisans. No, that's not quite right, she thought with a frown. It was a beautiful piece of work, but there was something ever so slightly unsettling about it. Even a hundred and fifty feet below the oceans surface with only a diving flashlight for illumination, she could see that the way light behaved around it was… strange. It was almost like the highly-polished volcanic glass reflected light, but paradoxically also seemed to absorb it in an unnatural way. It was like dropping a lantern into a deep, deep hole and watching it fall- you could see the light shining back at you, but also could see it being swallowed up and consumed by the void.

"Cass! You found it!" Ian's voice in the comms got her attention.

"Yeah," she said with a grin, and flashed the artifact to him. "Now," she said, stuffing the mirror into a satchel she had brought for the purpose, "let's get the hell out of here!"

Cassie and Ian swam to the open door of the captain's quarters and started to duck through it when something streaked by them, missing Cassie's arm by mere inches. "What the-" She drew back, holding herself back on one side of the door while Ian pressed himself to the wall on the other.

"Shit!" he cursed. "That was close!"

They both cautiously peered around the edge of the frame and saw about a half a dozen men in scuba gear approaching them. Several had diver propulsion vehicles, and all of them were armed with underwater rifles. Cassie gulped. "Umm, hey Cutter?" she said uncertainly.

"Yeah, luv?"

"Tristan sent divers," Cassie said in a shaky voice. "They've got guns. And we've got problems."

Ian looked over at her, and in that moment Cassie desperately cursed the way their diving masks kept them from being able to actually make eye contact. "Well," he said, "I was about to say that we're really up shit creek without a paddle. Then I realized that we're at the bottom of shit creek instead." He cast a grim look at the approaching Ocelotl. "I think that might be a lot worse."

WHOOO! Check your rear view mirrors, everyone, cuz Sixth Sun is coming up from behind! Wait- that sounded unintentionally bad...

It's been a while since I've posted two chapters this close together. I'll try to keep them comin'!