Gordian Slash
2009-05-29 12:03:30 UTC
As she dragged the bodies to the bridge embankment overhanging the dark
waters of the Vitava, thankful of her gloves as she handled that hideous
flesh, and tipped them over into the coursing flow, Lara thought back on
the sequence of events which had led her here.
It had started with a satellite photo.
Lara had been looking for a certain person for many years, a person she
had first encountered as a young woman at school in Switzerland. This
person, an older blonde woman she knew only as N - from the engraving
on a broach the woman was wearing at the time - had been responsible for
the deaths of two of Laras friends. She had also tortured Lara in a
bizarre underground maze, after forcibly taking a large sample of the
girls blood, in aid of what seemed to be some sort of skewed fanatical
biogenetic experiment. N had tried to kill Lara too, but the girl had
turned the tables on her captors and N had barely managed to escape
with her own life at the time. Lara returned to school and events soon
conspired to set her on the path that traditional British novelists of a
previous era would have described as, had she been a man, the life of a
gentleman adventurer.
Still, despite a lucrative and satisfying career spent retrieving lost
antiquities, often thwarting darker mercenary versions of herself in the
process, and undertaking special ops for the governments of several
nations whos vital interests fell in line with her own, Lara had never
forgotten N. It was just that too much time had passed between the
schoolgirl Lara who had first encountered the obsessed woman, and the
advent of the wealthy competent Lady Croft that could command the
services of secret government agencies, for her to find any reliable
trace of N after the events of their dire meeting so many years
previously. Not that she did not try. All subsequent leads had fallen
fallow; shed simply had too little information to go on.
Then the satellite photo had turned up, in a routine monitoring check of
a certain region of Mongolia - for reasons best known only to Lara
herself and a handful of others, she had been privately paying for
clandestine scrutiny of the area from space for many years - and N had
once again broken the tenuous surface tension of Laras complicated
life. The photo in question, forwarded to her at Croft Manor by a
discreet multi-tiered facilitation brokerage in Hong Kong that fronted
her interest in the photographic output of a certain Chinese satellite (
for a fee that would have crippled a minor industrialist ), had shown
what appeared to be a new archeological dig at the sight of some old
collapsed caves in a remote and thinly inhabited area of northeastern
Mongolia. It had, after some computer enhancement, shown Lara a tent
flap caught raised in mid-flutter on an afternoon breeze ... there on
that grainy flap of canvas had clearly been stitched a stylized capital
letter N that perfectly matched the blazon on the broach of Laras
first nemesis. She had found the bitch.
Lara immediately dropped all her current plans ( an Indonesian banking
cartel and a certain African despot would have breathed a heavy
collective sigh of relief had they but known ), and focused on that dig
in remote Mongolia.
The woman previously known only as N turned out to be one Jacqueline
Natla, the owner of a moderately successful international technology
concern that had some rather odd sidelines in mining and archeology. Now
in possession of a full name, Lara managed to trace the woman back to an
elite sanitarium in Monte Carlo - the date of Natlas admittance
coinciding to within mere days of Laras experiences with her in
Switzerland. The woman HAD seemed unhinged to the young girl, not to
mention the fact that Lara was pretty sure she had but at least one
bullet in her at the climax of their first meeting...N would have been
in urgent need of professional care.
What Lara could not figure out was why Natla, who knew who the seventeen
year old schoolgirl was in some detail - while Lara had almost no
knowledge of her persecutor, had never come for Lara. You would have
thought the woman would have wanted simple revenge at the very least. In
all the years that had passed since the bizarre incident in Switzerland
the medusa had never reared her snaky head.
Lara had examined numerous publicity and file photos of Natla, she had
even commissioned surveillance of her own. In none of the pictures was
there any hint of the fanatical madness Lara had seen in the womans
eyes so long ago, though it was unquestionably the same woman. the
photos showed the cool collected facile charm of a competent visionary
businesswoman at the prime of her facilities.
What had happened to Natla in that sanitarium all those years ago?
Lara went to Mongolia. There she found a recently deserted encampment,
now attended by an occupying force of Chinese soldiers...quite a lot of
Chinese soldiers. No sign of Natlas presence remained. Even the tent
shown on the satellite photo was gone. She could not approach close
enough to see if they had found what they were looking for. Lara
actually hoped so - better a rouge technocrat than the Chinese government.
Lara knew what it was that the woman hoped to find in the catacthonian
darkness of those ancient collapsed caves.
As she policed up the spent brass the skorpions had flung all around the
snow blanketed Prague street, Lara shuddered in the grip of strong and
decidedly unwelcome memories...
---
ENDS PART THREE ( LC 9.3 )
waters of the Vitava, thankful of her gloves as she handled that hideous
flesh, and tipped them over into the coursing flow, Lara thought back on
the sequence of events which had led her here.
It had started with a satellite photo.
Lara had been looking for a certain person for many years, a person she
had first encountered as a young woman at school in Switzerland. This
person, an older blonde woman she knew only as N - from the engraving
on a broach the woman was wearing at the time - had been responsible for
the deaths of two of Laras friends. She had also tortured Lara in a
bizarre underground maze, after forcibly taking a large sample of the
girls blood, in aid of what seemed to be some sort of skewed fanatical
biogenetic experiment. N had tried to kill Lara too, but the girl had
turned the tables on her captors and N had barely managed to escape
with her own life at the time. Lara returned to school and events soon
conspired to set her on the path that traditional British novelists of a
previous era would have described as, had she been a man, the life of a
gentleman adventurer.
Still, despite a lucrative and satisfying career spent retrieving lost
antiquities, often thwarting darker mercenary versions of herself in the
process, and undertaking special ops for the governments of several
nations whos vital interests fell in line with her own, Lara had never
forgotten N. It was just that too much time had passed between the
schoolgirl Lara who had first encountered the obsessed woman, and the
advent of the wealthy competent Lady Croft that could command the
services of secret government agencies, for her to find any reliable
trace of N after the events of their dire meeting so many years
previously. Not that she did not try. All subsequent leads had fallen
fallow; shed simply had too little information to go on.
Then the satellite photo had turned up, in a routine monitoring check of
a certain region of Mongolia - for reasons best known only to Lara
herself and a handful of others, she had been privately paying for
clandestine scrutiny of the area from space for many years - and N had
once again broken the tenuous surface tension of Laras complicated
life. The photo in question, forwarded to her at Croft Manor by a
discreet multi-tiered facilitation brokerage in Hong Kong that fronted
her interest in the photographic output of a certain Chinese satellite (
for a fee that would have crippled a minor industrialist ), had shown
what appeared to be a new archeological dig at the sight of some old
collapsed caves in a remote and thinly inhabited area of northeastern
Mongolia. It had, after some computer enhancement, shown Lara a tent
flap caught raised in mid-flutter on an afternoon breeze ... there on
that grainy flap of canvas had clearly been stitched a stylized capital
letter N that perfectly matched the blazon on the broach of Laras
first nemesis. She had found the bitch.
Lara immediately dropped all her current plans ( an Indonesian banking
cartel and a certain African despot would have breathed a heavy
collective sigh of relief had they but known ), and focused on that dig
in remote Mongolia.
The woman previously known only as N turned out to be one Jacqueline
Natla, the owner of a moderately successful international technology
concern that had some rather odd sidelines in mining and archeology. Now
in possession of a full name, Lara managed to trace the woman back to an
elite sanitarium in Monte Carlo - the date of Natlas admittance
coinciding to within mere days of Laras experiences with her in
Switzerland. The woman HAD seemed unhinged to the young girl, not to
mention the fact that Lara was pretty sure she had but at least one
bullet in her at the climax of their first meeting...N would have been
in urgent need of professional care.
What Lara could not figure out was why Natla, who knew who the seventeen
year old schoolgirl was in some detail - while Lara had almost no
knowledge of her persecutor, had never come for Lara. You would have
thought the woman would have wanted simple revenge at the very least. In
all the years that had passed since the bizarre incident in Switzerland
the medusa had never reared her snaky head.
Lara had examined numerous publicity and file photos of Natla, she had
even commissioned surveillance of her own. In none of the pictures was
there any hint of the fanatical madness Lara had seen in the womans
eyes so long ago, though it was unquestionably the same woman. the
photos showed the cool collected facile charm of a competent visionary
businesswoman at the prime of her facilities.
What had happened to Natla in that sanitarium all those years ago?
Lara went to Mongolia. There she found a recently deserted encampment,
now attended by an occupying force of Chinese soldiers...quite a lot of
Chinese soldiers. No sign of Natlas presence remained. Even the tent
shown on the satellite photo was gone. She could not approach close
enough to see if they had found what they were looking for. Lara
actually hoped so - better a rouge technocrat than the Chinese government.
Lara knew what it was that the woman hoped to find in the catacthonian
darkness of those ancient collapsed caves.
As she policed up the spent brass the skorpions had flung all around the
snow blanketed Prague street, Lara shuddered in the grip of strong and
decidedly unwelcome memories...
---
ENDS PART THREE ( LC 9.3 )